"I am accursed!" he said.
Never without such evidence could he have believed this thing. From the
moment that he was beset outside the gates of Godolphin Court he had
conceived it to be the work of Rosamund, and his listlessness was
begotten of the thought that she could have suffered conviction of his
guilt and her hatred of him to urge her to such lengths as these. Never
for an instant had he doubted the message delivered him by Lionel that
it was Mistress Rosamund who summoned him. And just as he believed
himself to be going to Godolphin Court in answer to her summons, so did
he conclude that the happening there was the real matter to which she
had bidden him, a thing done by her contriving, her answer to his
attempt on the previous day to gain speech with her, her manner of
ensuring that such an impertinence should never be repeated.
This conviction had been gall and wormwood to him; it had drugged his
very senses, reducing him to a listless indifference to any fate that
might be reserved him. Yet it had not been so bitter a draught as this
present revelation. After all, in her case there were some grounds for
the hatred that had come to take the place of her erstwhile love. But
in Lionel's what grounds were possible? What motives could exist for
such an action as this, other than a monstrous, a loathly egoism which
desired perhaps to ensure that the blame for the death of Peter
Godolphin should not be shifted from the shoulders that were unjustly
bearing it, and the accursed desire to profit by the removal of the man
who had been brother, father and all else to him? He shuddered in sheer
horror.
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