"Is there no way out of it, old boy?" the Captain continued in a grave
tone. "Is it only suspicion, you know, or--or what is it? Any letters?
Can't you keep it quiet? Best not make any noise about a thing of that
sort if you can help it." "Think of his only finding her out now," the
Captain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred particular
conversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs. Crawley's reputation had
been torn to shreds.
"There's no way but one out of it," Rawdon replied--"and there's only a
way out of it for one of us, Mac--do you understand? I was put out of
the way--arrested--I found 'em alone together. I told him he was a
liar and a coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him."
"Serve him right," Macmurdo said. "Who is it?"
Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.
"The deuce! a Marquis! they said he--that is, they said you--"
"What the devil do you mean?" roared out Rawdon; "do you mean that you
ever heard a fellow doubt about my wife and didn't tell me, Mac?"
"The world's very censorious, old boy," the other replied. "What the
deuce was the good of my telling you what any tom-fools talked about?"
"It was damned unfriendly, Mac," said Rawdon, quite overcome; and,
covering his face with his hands, he gave way to an emotion, the sight
of which caused the tough old campaigner opposite him to wince with
sympathy. "Hold up, old boy," he said; "great man or not, we'll put a
bullet in him, damn him. As for women, they're all so."
"You don't know how fond I was of that one," Rawdon said,
half-inarticulately. "Damme, I followed her like a footman. I gave up
everything I had to her. I'm a beggar because I would marry her. By
Jove, sir, I've pawned my own watch in order to get her anything she
fancied; and she she's been making a purse for herself all the time,
and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod." He then fiercely
and incoherently, and with an agitation under which his counsellor had
never before seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of the
story. His adviser caught at some stray hints in it. "She may be
innocent, after all," he said. "She says so. Steyne has been a hundred
times alone with her in the house before."
"It may be so," Rawdon answered sadly, "but this don't look very
innocent": and he showed the Captain the thousand-pound note which he
had found in Becky's pocket-book. "This is what he gave her, Mac, and
she kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house, she refused
to stand by me when I was locked up." The Captain could not but own
that the secreting of the money had a very ugly look.