"I admit it, darling," he blurted forth, holding her hand in the darkness as they walked. The ecstasy and the bliss of that moment held him almost without words. She was as life to him. He pursued that soul-deadening evasion, and lived that grey, sordid life among men and women escaping from justice solely for her sake. If he married Louise Lambert and then cast off the matrimonial shackles he would recover his patrimony and be well-off.
To many men the temptation would have proved too great. The inheritance of his father's fortune was so very easy. Louise was a pretty girl, well educated, bright, vivacious, and thoroughly up to date. Yet somehow, he always mistrusted Benton, though his father, perhaps blinded in his years, had reckoned him his best and most sincere friend. There are many unscrupulous men who pose as dear, devoted friends of those who they know are doomed by disease to die--men who hope to be left executors with attaching emoluments, and men who have some deep game to play either by swindling the orphans, or by advancing one of their own kith and kin in the social scale.
Old Mr. Henfrey, a genuine country landowner of the good old school, a man who lived in tweeds and leggings, and who rode regularly to hounds and enjoyed his days across the stubble, was one of the unsuspicious. Charles Benton he had first met long ago in the Hotel de Russie in Rome while he was wintering there. Benton was merry, and, apparently, a gentleman. He talked of his days at Harrow, and afterwards at Cambridge, of being sent down because of a big "rag" in the Gladstonian days, and of his life since as a fairly well-off bachelor with rooms in London.
Thus a close intimacy had sprung up between them, and Hugh had naturally regarded his father's friend with entire confidence.
"You admit that you are not telling me the whole truth, Hugh," remarked the girl after a long pause. "It is hardly fair of you, is it?"
"Ah! darling, you do not know my position," he hastened to explain as he gripped her little hand more tightly in his own. "I only wish I could learn the truth myself so as to make complete explanation. But at present all is doubt and uncertainty. Won't you trust me, Dorise?"
"Trust you!" she echoed. "Why, of course I will! You surely know that, Hugh."
The young man was again silent for some moments. Then he exclaimed: "Yet, after all, I can see no ray of hope."
"Why?"
"Hope of our marriage, Dorise," he said hoarsely. "How can I, without money, ever hope to make you my wife?"