dge as would make the approaches of vice comprehensible, is a new
kind of education to the most experienced of men. He had not believed it
to be possible to be so altogether ignorant of evil as he had found her;
and how could he explain to her and gain her indulgent consideration of
the circumstances which had led him into what in her vocabulary would be
branded with the name of vice? Sir Tom even now did not feel it to be
vice. It was unfortunate that it had so happened. He had been a fool. It
was almost inconceivable to him now how for the indulgence of a
momentary passion he could have placed himself in a position that might
one day be so embarrassing and disagreeable. He had not behaved ill at
the moment; it was the woman who had behaved ill. But how in the name of
wonder to explain all this to Lucy? Lucy, who was not conscious of any
reason why a man's code of morals should be different from that of a
woman! When Sir Tom returned to this painful and difficult subject, the
immediate question as to Lucy's strange conduct died from his mind. It
became more easy, by dint of repeating it, to believe that a mere
unreasonable panic about little Tom was the cause of her withdrawal. It
was foolish, but a loving and lovely foolishness which a man might do
more than forgive, which he might adore and smile at, as men love to do,
feeling that for a woman to be thus silly is desirable, a counterpoise
to the selfishness and want of feeling which are so common in the world.
But how to make this spotless creature understand that a man might slip
aside and yet not be a dissolute man, that he might be betrayed into
certain proceedings which would not perhaps bear the inspection of
severe judges, and yet be neither vicious nor heartless. This problem,
after he had considered it in every possible way, Sir Tom finally gave
up with a sort of despair. He must keep his secret within his own bosom.
He must contrive some means of doing what, in case his hypothesis was
right, would now be clearly a duty, without exciting any suspicion on
Lucy's part. That, he thought with a compunction, would be easy enough.
There was no one whom it would cost less trouble to deceive. With these
thoughts he went to sleep in the room which seemed strangely lonely
without her presence. Perhaps, however, it was not ungrateful to him to
be alone to think all those thoughts without the additional sense of
treachery which must have ensued had he thought them in her pr