ghter?

Chapter XXXVI

Mr. and Mrs. Herbert.

The stealthy influence of distrust fastens its hold on the mind by
slow degrees. Little by little it reaches its fatal end, and disguises
delusion successfully under the garb of truth.

Day after day, the false conviction grew on Sydney's mind that Herbert
Linley was comparing the life he led now with the happier life which
he remembered at Mount Morven. Day after day, her unreasoning fear
contemplated the time when Herbert Linley would leave her friendless,
in the world that had no place in it for women like herself.
Delusion--fatal delusion that looked like truth! Morally weak as he
might be, the man whom she feared to trust had not yet entirely lost the
sense which birth and breeding had firmly fastened in him--the sense
of honor. Acting under that influence, he was (if the expression may
be permitted) consistent even in inconsistency. With equal sincerity of
feeling, he reproached himself for his infidelity toward the woman whom
he had deserted, and devoted himself to his duty toward the woman
whom he had misled. In Sydney's presence--suffer as he might under
the struggle to maintain his resolution when he was alone--he kept his
intercourse with her studiously gentle in manner, and considerate in
language; his conduct offered assurances for the future which she could
only see through the falsifying medium of her own distrust.

In the delusion that now possessed her she read, over and over again,
the letter which Captain Bennydeck had addressed to her father; she saw,
more and more clearly, the circumstances which associated her situation
with the situation of the poor girl who had closed her wasted life among
the nuns in a French convent.

Two results followed on this state of things.

When Herbert asked to what part of England they should go, on leaving
London, she mentioned Sandyseal as a place that she had heard of, and
felt some curiosity to see. The same day--bent on pleasing her, careless
where he lived now, at home or abroad--he wrote to engage rooms at the
hotel.

A time followed, during which they were obliged to wait until rooms were
free. In this interval, brooding over the melancholy absence of a friend
or relative in whom she could confide, her morbid dread of the future
decided her on completing the parallel between herself and that
other lost creature of whom she had read. Sydney opened communication
anonymously with the Benedictine c