But
where was it to come from? He himself was worth perhaps ten thousand
pounds, or with the commutation value of his pension, possibly twelve,
and he had not the means of raising a farthing more. He thought the
position over till he was tired of thinking, and then with a heavy
heart and yet with a strange glow of happiness shining through his
grief, like sunlight through a grey sky, at last he went to sleep and
dreamed that Ida had gone from him, and that he was once more utterly
alone in the world.
But if he had cause for trouble, how much more was it so with Ida?
Poor woman! under her somewhat cold and stately exterior lay a deep
and at times a passionate nature. For some weeks she had been growing
strangely attracted to Harold Quaritch, and now she knew that she
loved him, so that there was no one thing that she desired more in
this wide world than to become his wife. And yet she was bound, bound
by a sense of honour and a sense too of money received, to stay at the
beck and call of a man she detested, and if at any time it pleased him
to throw down the handkerchief, to be there to pick it up and hold it
to her breast. It was bad enough to have had this hanging over her
head when she was herself more or less in a passive condition, and
therefore to a certain extent reckless as to her future; but now that
her heart was alight with the holy flame of a good woman's love, now
that her whole nature rebelled and cried out aloud against the
sacrilege involved, it was both revolting and terrible.
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