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and David Widger,
KENELM did not return home till dusk, and just as he was sitting downto his solitary meal there was a ring at the bell, and Mrs. Jonesushered in Mr. Thomas Bowles.
Though that gentleman had never written to announce the day of hisarrival, he was not the less welcome.
"Only," said Kenelm, "if you preserve the appetite I have lost, I fearyou will find meagre fare to-day. Sit down, man."
"Thank you, kindly, but I dined two hours ago in London, and I reallycan eat nothing more."
Kenelm was too well-bred to press unwelcome hospitalities. In a veryfew minutes his frugal repast was ended; the cloth removed, the twomen were left alone.
"Your room is here, of course, Tom; that was engaged from the day Iasked you, but you ought to have given me a line to say when to expectyou, so that I could have put our hostess on her mettle as to dinneror supper. You smoke still, of course: light your pipe."
"Thank you, Mr. Chillingly, I seldom smoke now; but if you will excusea cigar," and Tom produced a very smart cigar-case.
"Do as you would at home. I shall send word to Will Somers that youand I sup there to-morrow. You forgive me for letting out yoursecret. All straightforward now and henceforth. You come to theirhearth as a friend, who will grow dearer to them both every year. Ah,Tom, this love for woman seems to me a very wonderful thing. It maysink a man into such deeps of evil, and lift a man into such heightsof good."
"I don't know as to the good," said Tom, mournfully, and laying asidehis cigar.
"Go on smoking: I should like to keep you company; can you spare meone of your cigars?"
Tom offered his case. Kenelm extracted a cigar, lighted it, drew afew whiffs, and, when he saw that Tom had resumed his own cigar,recommenced conversation.
"You don't know as to the good; but tell me honestly, do you think ifyou had not loved Jessie Wiles, you would be as good a man as you arenow?"
"If I am better than I was, it is not because of my love for thegirl."
"What then?"
"The loss of her."
Kenelm started, turned very pale, threw aside the cigar, rose, andwalked the room to and fro with very quick but very irregular strides.
Tom continued quietly. "Suppose I had won Jessie and married her, Idon't think any idea of improving myself would have entered my head.My uncle would have been very much offended at my marrying aday-labourer's daughter, and would not have invited me to Luscombe. Ishould have remained at Graveleigh, with no ambition of being morethan a common farrier, an ignorant, noisy, quarrelsome man; and if Icould not have made Jessie as fond of me as I wished, I should nothave broken myself of drinking, and I shudder to think what a brute Imight have been, when I see in the newspapers an account of somedrunken wife-beater. How do we know but what that wife-beater lovedhis wife dearly before marriage, and she did not care for him? Hishome was unhappy, and so he took to drink and to wife-beating."
"I was right, then," said Kenelm, halting his strides, when I told youit would be a miserable fate to be married to a girl whom you loved todistraction, and whose heart you could never warm to you, whose lifeyou could never render happy."
"So right!"
"Let us drop that part of the sub