It is only the unselfish men who think much, otherwise Colonel Abinger might have pondered a little over his guest. Dowton had spoken of himself as an enthusiastic angler, yet he let his flies drift down the stream like fallen leaves. He never remembered to go a-fishing until it was suggested to him. He had given his host several reasons for his long absence from his property, and told him he did not want the world to know that he was back in England, as he was not certain whether he would remain. The colonel at his request introduced him to the few visitors at the castle as Mr. Dowton, and was surprised to discover afterwards that they all knew his real name.
'I assure you,' Mary's father said to him, 'that they have not learned it from me. It is incomprehensible how a thing like that leaks out.'
'I don't understand it,' said Dowton, who, however, should have understood it, as he had taken the visitors aside and told them his real name himself. He seemed to do this not of his free will, but because he could not help it.
It never struck the colonel that his own society was not what tied Sir Clement to Dome Castle; for widowers with grown-up daughters are in a foreign land without interpreters. On that morning when the baronet vanished, nevertheless, the master of Dome Castle was the only person in it who did not think that it would soon lose its mistress, mere girl though she was.
Sir Clement's strange disappearance was accounted for at the castle, where alone it was properly known, in various ways. Miss Abinger, in the opinion of the servants' hall, held her head so high that there he was believed to have run away because she had said him no. Miss Abinger excused and blamed him alternately to herself, until she found a dull satisfaction in looking upon him as the villain he might have been had his high forehead spoken true. As for the colonel, he ordered Mary (he had no need) never to mention the fellow's name to him, but mentioned it frequently himself.
Nothing had happened, so far as was known, to disturb the baronet's serenity; neither friends nor lawyers had been aware that he was in England, and he had received no letters. Mary remembered his occasional fits of despondency, but on the whole he seemed to revel in his visit, and had never looked happier than the night before he went. His traps were sent by the colonel in a fury to the little inn where he had at first taken up his abode, but it was not known at the castle whether he ever got them. Some months afterwards a letter from him appeared in the Times, dated from Suez, and from then until he reappeared at Dome Castle, the colonel, except when he spoke to himself, never heard the baronet's name mentioned.
Sir Clement must have been very impulsive, for on returning to the castle he had intended to treat Miss Abinger with courteous coldness, as if she had been responsible for his flight, and he had not seen her again for ten minutes before he asked her to marry him. He meant to explain his conduct in one way to the colonel, and he explained it in quite another way.
When Colonel Abinger took him into the smoking-room on Christmas Eve to hear what he had to say for himself, the baronet sank into a chair, with a look of contentment on his beautiful face that said he was glad to be there again. Then the colonel happened to mention Mary's name in such a way that he seemed to know of Sir Clement's proposal to her three years earlier. At once the baronet began another story from the one he had meant to tell, and though he soon discovered that he had credited his host with a knowledge the colonel did not possess, it was too late to draw back. So Mary's father heard to his amazement that the baronet had run away because he was in love with Miss Abinger. Colonel Abinger had read The Scorn of Scorns, but it had taught him nothing.
'She was only a schoolgirl when you saw her last,' he said, in bewilderment; 'but I hardly see how that should have made you fly the house like – yes, like a thief.'
Dowton looked sadly at him.
'I don't know,' he said, speaking as if with reluctance, 'that in any circumstances I should be justified in telling you the whole miserable story. Can you not guess it? When I came here I was not a free man.'
'You were already married?'
'No, but I was engaged to be married.'
'Did Mary know anything of this?'
'Nothing of that engagement, and but little, I think, of the attachment that grew up in my heart for her. I kept that to myself.'
'She was too young,' said the wise colonel, 'to think of such things then; and even now I do not see why you should have left us as you did.'
Sir Clement rose to his feet and paced the room in great agitation.
'It is hard,' he said at last, 'to speak of such a thing to another man. But let me tell you, Abinger, that when I was with you three years ago there were times when I thought I would lose my reason. Do you know what it is to have such a passion as that raging in your heart and yet have to stifle it? There were whole nights when I walked up and down my room till dawn. I trembled every time I saw Miss Abinger alone lest I should say that to her which I had no right to say. Her voice alone was sufficient to unman me. I felt that my only safety was in flight.'
'I have run away from a woman myself in my time,' the colonel said, with a grim chuckle. 'There are occasions when it is the one thing to do, but this was surely not one of them, if Mary knew nothing.'
'Sometimes I feared she did know that I cared for her. That is a hard thing to conceal, and, besides, I suppose I felt so wretched that I was not in a condition to act rationally. When I left the castle that day I had not the least intention of not returning.'
'And since then you have been half round the world again? Are you married?'
'No.'
'Then I am to understand – '
'That she is dead,' said Sir Clement, in a low voice.
There was a silence between them, which was at last broken by the colonel.
'What you have told me,' he said, 'is a great surprise, more especially with regard to my daughter. Being but a child at the time, however, she could not, I am confident, have thought of you in any other light than as her father's friend. It is, of course, on that footing that you return now?'
'As her father's friend, certainly, I hope,' said the baronet firmly, 'but I wish to tell you now that my regard for her has never changed. I confess I would have been afraid to come back to you had not my longing to see her again given me courage.'
'She has not the least idea of this,' murmured the colonel, 'not the least. The fact is that Mary has lived so quietly with me here that she is still a child. Miss Meredith, whom I dare say you have met here, has been almost her only friend, and I am quite certain that the thought of marriage has never crossed their minds. If you, or even if I, were to speak of such a thing to Mary, it would only frighten her.'
'I should not think of speaking to her on the subject at present,' the baronet interposed, rather hurriedly, 'but I thought it best to explain my position to you. You know what I am, that I have been almost a vagrant on the face of the earth since I reached manhood, but no one can see more clearly than I do myself how unworthy I am of her.'
'I do not need to tell you,' said the colonel, taking the baronet's hand, 'that I used to like you, Dowton, and indeed I know no one whom I would prefer for a son-in-law. But you must be cautious with Mary.'
'I shall be very cautious,' said the baronet; 'indeed there is no hurry, none whatever.'
Colonel Abinger would have brought the conversation to a close here, but there was something more for Dowton to say.
'I agree with you,' he said, forgetting, perhaps, that the colonel had not spoken on this point, 'that Miss Abinger should be kept ignorant for the present of the cause that drove me on that former occasion from the castle.'
'It is the wisest course to adopt,' said the colonel, looking as if he had thought the matter out step by step.