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Updated: June 14, 2025
On the basis of her having been deceived by Lord Hurdly about him, he could forgive her her marriage. Where would her desolate heart have turned for comfort? And he knew her nature well enough to realize that what Lord Hurdly had to offer might have seemed likely to serve her as a substitute for happiness.
He was not without certain misgivings on this point, but he had written so convincingly, as he thought, of Bettina's beauty, breeding, and fitness for the position of Lady Hurdly that was to be, that he would not and could not believe that his cousin would disapprove.
And so indeed he did. On the heels of his receipt of Bettina's letter her marriage to Lord Hurdly was announced by cable not to him, but through the newspapers. Then into his heart there entered also the exceeding bitterness of a lost ideal. She became to him, as he had become to her, the image of broken faith, capricious feeling, and overweening worldly ambition.
To the housekeeper Lord Hurdly explained that this lady was in deep trouble a fact sufficiently attested by her heavy mourning and would like to rest awhile before eating some luncheon. Bettina saw herself regarded with a respectful awe which she had never had a taste of before.
True, he was Lord Hurdly's heir-at-law, and he could not be disinherited, so far as the title and entailed estates were concerned, but it was wholly within the power of the present lord to deprive him of the other properties, and he knew Lord Hurdly well enough to understand that he was tenacious of any position once taken. So he said farewell to Bettina with a sad heart.
She began to think for the first time of the utter recklessness with which she had been spending the large sums of money which Lord Hurdly placed at her disposal. Her expenditure of these sums heretofore had met with his entire approval, as she could never have too rich a wardrobe to please him.
At the proper time she showed herself at Lord Hurdly's side, and she had beauty enough and wit enough not only to do credit to that high position, but to cast a glory over it which he knew in his heart no other Lady Hurdly of them all had ever done.
Horace, so that she might lose no opportunity of furthering his interest with Lord Hurdly, and making up to him, as far as possible, for having disappointed him in his worldly prospects by marrying his cousin. That he could hold her accountable for any other wrong to him she did not admit.
She tried to coax the belief that it was as Horace's wife that she would one day enjoy all these delights, but the thought eluded her. She could not see Horace in the seat now filled by his cousin. In imagination as well as in reality it was Lord Hurdly who occupied that seat. This conviction, which every moment deepened, she could not shake off and could not account for.
Petersburg, a mental condition of such abject misery settled down upon her that the thought of the endless days and nights of idle monotony which would be her lot if she returned home, and the awful void of her mother's absence, became intolerable. She could not do it. She must find some way of escape from such a fate. Just as she was casting about for such a way, Lord Hurdly came to see her.
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