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Updated: May 15, 2025
The Major saw what Benjamin's slower perception had not yet discovered that my fortitude was beginning to sink under the unrelieved oppression of suspense. "Come!" he said. "Let us go to the hotel." It then wanted nearly five minutes to the half-hour. I looked my gratitude to Major Fitz-David for sparing me those last minutes: I could not speak to him or to Benjamin.
After one searching look at me, the Major silently offered me his arm, and led me out of the room. We walked to the far end of the hall. Major Fitz-David opened the door of a long, narrow room built out at the back of the house as a smoking-room, and extending along one side of the courtyard as far as the stable wall.
"Major Fitz-David may do very well for the ladies," he said. "The ladies can treat him as a species of elderly human lap-dog. I don t dine with lap-dogs; I have said, No. You go. He or some of his ladies may be of use to you. Who are the guests? Did he tell you?" "There was a French lady whose name I forget," I said, "and Lady Clarinda " "That will do! She is a friend of Mrs. Beauly's.
"You have honored me by asking for my advice," he said. "I earnestly advise you, Mrs. Eustace, to break your engagement. I go even further than that I entreat you not to see Dexter again." Just what my mother-in-law had said! just what Benjamin and Major Fitz-David had said! They were all against me. And still I held out. I wonder, when I look back at it, at my own obstinacy.
Having said the polite words which the occasion rendered necessary, I ventured to recall Major Fitz-David to the subject in discussion between us when his visitor had entered the room. The Major was very unwilling to return to the perilous topic on which we had just touched when the interruption occurred.
There was but one friend of his whom I knew of my uncle's correspondent, Major Fitz-David. My heart beat fast as the name recurred to my memory. Suppose I followed Benjamin's advice? Suppose I applied to Major Fitz-David? Even if he, too, refused to answer my questions, my position would not be more helpless than it was now. I determined to make the attempt.
As they left us, the girl who had so strangely revealed my husband's secret to me rose in her corner and approached the sofa. "I suppose I had better go too?" she said, addressing Major Fitz-David. "If you please," the Major answered. She tossed her head, and turned her back on him in high indignation.
"You can be of the greatest use to me," I said, "if you will allow me to presume, Major, on your past kindness. I want to ask you a question; and I may have a favor to beg when you have answered me." Major Fitz-David set down his wine-glass on its way to his lips, and looked at me with an appearance of breathless interest.
I pulled the door to again the moment his back was turned, and sat down for a while to compose myself. He had been watching me at the book-case! The man who was in my husband's confidence, the man who knew where the clew was to be found, had been watching me at the book-case! There was no doubt of it now. Major Fitz-David had shown me the hiding-place of the secret in spite of himself!
Major Fitz-David instantly threw himself prostrate on my mercy more innocently than ever. "Ask of me anything else in the wide world," he said; "but don't ask me to be false to my friend. Spare me that and there is nothing I will not do to satisfy you. I mean what I say, mind!" he went on, bending closer to me, and speaking more seriously than he had spoken yet "I think you are very hardly used.
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