Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/354

346 stunned, numbed as hand and foot become numbed for awhile, and then with a tingling and needle-pricking, the moral juices began once more to flow, and the agony of inner pain he felt was the pledge of moral recovery.

As soon as Giles Inglett Saltren began to consider what were the consequences drawn upon him and Arminell by his folly, an almost overpowering desire came over him to fly from England. He had sufficient money to pay his passage across the Atlantic, and to maintain him in a new world till he could obtain a suitable situation. In a new world he might begin life anew, leaving behind his old follies and faults, and make a smooth table of the past. In the old world he could do nothing to remedy what he had wrought; but he put the temptation from him. He saw that to yield to it would be an act of cowardice, and would result in moral ruin. Instinctively, without self-analysis, he reached the conclusion that a single course lay open before him if he were to save his moral self from wreck. The same moment that he became conscious of this, he stood up, and hailed a passing empty hansom.

That moment saw the beginning of a new life in him; new ends, new visions, rose before his eyes.

Thus it was that Giles Inglett Saltren entered the sitting-room where his uncle was engaged with Arminell, and thus it was that he entered it a very different man from what Mr. Welsh had described him.

"How came you here?" asked the journalist. "Did not I tell you to remain in Hyde Park till you were wanted?"

"I have come," answered Giles firmly, "to speak to Miss Inglett. I have a just duty to perform to her, to clear her mind of the clouds I have brought over it. Miss Inglett, I was utterly wrong in supposing that his lordship was—was—what I let you believe him to be, my father. I did him a grievous wrong, I imagined it possible that the best and