She knew that he wished
her to aid him in a deliberate system of cheating. She knew this, and
she did not withdraw her friendship from this man.
Alas, no! she loved him. Not because she believed him to be good and
honourable--not because she was blinded to the baseness of his nature.
She loved him in spite of her knowledge of his real character--she
yielded to the influence of an infatuation which she was so powerless
to resist that she might almost be pardoned for believing herself the
victim of a baleful destiny.
"It is my fate," she murmured to herself, after this last revelation of
her lover's infamy. "It must needs be my fate, since women with less
claim to be loved than I possess are so happy as to win the devotion of
good and brave men. It is my fate to love a cheat and trickster, on
whose constancy I have so poor a hold that a breath may sever the
miserable bond that unites us."
Victor Carrington was one of the first persons whom Reginald Eversleigh
introduced to Madame Durski after her arrival in England. She was
pleased with the quiet and graceful manners of the Frenchman; but she
was at a loss to understand Sir Reginald's intimate association with a
man who was at once poor and obscure.
She told Sir Reginald as much the next time she saw him alone.
"I know that in most of your friendships convenience and self-interest
reign paramount over what you call sentimentality; and yet you choose
for your friend this Carrington, whom no one knows; and who is, you
tell me, even poorer than yourself.
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