The larger public regarded the story as an extreme case of the innocent victim and the cowardly society villain.It was only among a comparatively small set that Delia's reputation was known, and there, in view of Jack's notorious and peculiar intimacy, his repudiation of all relations with her was received with contemptuous incredulity.That he should have first entered upon such relations at the very time when he was already courting Lady Sylvia was regarded even in those circles as a 'strong order,' and they looked upon his present attitude with great indignation, as a cowardly attempt to save his own character by casting upon the dead woman's memory all the odium of a false accusation.With an entire absence of logic, too, he was made responsible for the suicide having taken place in Lady Sylvia's presence.She had broken off the engagement the day after the catastrophe, and her family, a clan powerful in the London world, furious at the mud through which her name had been dragged, did all that they could to intensify the feeling already existing against Jack.
"Not a voice was raised in his defense.He was advised to leave the army; he was requested to withdraw from some of his clubs, turned out of others, avoided by his fast acquaintances, cut by his respectable ones.It was enough to kill a weaker man.
"He showed no resentment at the measure thus dealt out to him.
Indeed, at the first, except for Sylvia's desertion of him, he seemed dully indifferent to it all.It was as if his soul had been stunned, from the moment that that wretched woman's blood had splashed upon his fingers, and her dead eyes had looked up into his own.
"But it was not long before he realized the full extent of the social damnation which had been inflicted upon him, and he then resolved to leave the country and go to America.The night before he started he came down here to take leave.I was here looking after my parents--George, whose mind was almost unhinged by the family disgrace, having gone abroad with his wife.My mother at the first news of what had happened had taken to her bed, never to leave it again; and thus it was in my presence alone, up there in my father's little study, that Jack gave him that night the whole story.He told it quietly enough; but when he had finished, with a sudden outburst of feeling he turned upon me.It was I who had been the cause of it all.My insensate folly had induced him to make the unhappy woman's acquaintance, to allow and even encourage her fatal love, to commit all the blunders and sins which had brought about her miserable ending and his final overthrow.It was by means of me that she had obtained access to him on that dreadful night; my evidence which most utterly damned him in public opinion;through me he had lost his reputation, his friends, his career, his country, the woman he loved, his hopes for the future; through me, above all, that the burden of that horrible death would lie for ever on his soul.He was lashing himself to fury with his own words as he spoke; and I stood leaning against the wall opposite to him, cold, dumb, unresisting, when suddenly my father interrupted.
I think that both Jack and I had forgotten his presence; but at the sound of his voice, changed from what we had ever heard it, we turned to him, and I then for the first time saw in his face the death-look which never afterwards quitted it.
