Cashel Byron's Profession

"Ropes and stakes! Fiddlesticks and grandmothers! There weren't no

ropes and stakes. It was only a turn-up--that is, if there was any

fighting at all. I didn't see none; but I s'pose you did. But then

you're clever, and I'm not."

By this time the last straggler of the party had disappeared from

Lydia, who had watched their retreat from the door of the Warren

Lodge. When she turned to go in she saw Cashel cautiously entering

from the room in which he had lain concealed. His excitement had

passed off; he looked cold and anxious, as if a reaction were

setting in.

"Are they all gone?" he said. "That servant of yours is a good sort.

He has promised to bring me some clothes. As for you, you're better

than--What's the matter? Where are you going to?"

Lydia had put on her hat, and was swiftly wrapping herself in a

shawl. Wreaths of rosy color were chasing each other through her

cheeks; and her eyes and nostrils, usually so tranquil, were

dilated.

"Won't you speak to me?" he said, irresolutely.

"Just this," she replied, with passion. "Let me never see you again.

The very foundations of my life are loosened: I have told a lie. I

have made my servant--an honorable man--an accomplice in a lie. We

are worse than you; for even your wild-beast's handiwork is a less

evil than the bringing of a falsehood into the world. This is what

has come to me out of our acquaintance. I have given you a

hiding-place. Keep it. I will never enter it again."

Cashel, appalled, shrank back with an expression such as a child

wears when, in trying to steal sweet-meats from a high shelf, it

pulls the whole cupboard down about its ears. He neither spoke nor

stirred as she left the lodge.

Finding herself presently at the castle, she went to her boudoir,

where she found her maid, the French lady, from whose indignant

description of the proceedings below she gathered that the policemen

were being regaled with bread and cheese, and beer; and that the

attendance of a surgeon had been dispensed with, Paradise's wounds

having been dressed skilfully by Mellish. Lydia bade her send

Bashville to the Warren Lodge to see that there were no strangers

loitering about it, and ordered that none of the female servants

should return there until he came back. Then she sat down and tried

not to think. But she could not help thinking; so she submitted and

tried to think the late catastrophe out. An idea that she had

disjointed the whole framework of things by creating a false belief

filled her imagination. The one conviction that she had brought out

of her reading, observing, reflecting, and living was that the

concealment of a truth, with its resultant false beliefs, must

produce mischief, even though the beginning of that mischief might

be as inconceivable as the end. She made no distinction between the

subtlest philosophical misconception and the vulgarest lie. The evil

of Cashel's capture was measurable, the evil of a lie beyond all

measure. She felt none the less assured of that evil because she

could not foresee one bad consequence likely to ensue from what she

had done. Her misgivings pressed heavily upon her; for her father, a

determined sceptic, had taught her his own views, and she was,

therefore, destitute of the consolations which religion has for the

wrongdoer. It was plainly her duty to send for the policeman and

clear up the deception she had practised on him. But this she could

not do. Her will, in spite of her reason, acted in the opposite

direction. And in this paralysis of her moral power she saw the evil

of the lie beginning. She had given it birth, and nature would not

permit her to strangle the monster.