In Liverpool he had heard tidings of Mrs Hurtle, though it can hardly be said that he obtained any trustworthy information. The lady after landing from an American steamer had been at Mr Ramsbottom's office, inquiring for him, Paul; and Mr Ramsbottom had thought that the inquiries were made in a manner indicating danger. He therefore had spoken to a fellow-traveller with Mrs Hurtle, and the fellow-traveller had opined that Mrs Hurtle was 'a queer card.' 'On board ship we all gave it up to her that she was about the handsomest woman we had ever seen, but we all said that there was a bit of the wild cat in her breeding.' Then Mr Ramsbottom had asked whether the lady was a widow. 'There was a man on board from Kansas,' said the fellow-traveller, 'who knew a man named Hurtle at Leavenworth, who was separated from his wife and is still alive. There was, according to him, a queer story about the man and his wife having fought a duel with pistols, and then having separated.' This Mr Ramsbottom, who in an earlier stage of the affair had heard something of Paul and Mrs Hurtle together, managed to communicate to the young man. His advice about the railway company was very clear and general, and such as an honest man would certainly give; but it might have been conveyed by letter. The information, such as it was, respecting Mrs Hurtle, could only be given vivâ voce, and perhaps the invitation to Liverpool had originated in Mr Ramsbottom's appreciation of this fact. 'As she was asking after you here, perhaps it is well that you should know,' his friend said to him. Paul had only thanked him, not daring on the spur of the moment to speak of his own difficulties.
In all this there had been increased dismay, but there had also been some comfort. It had only been at moments in which he had been subject to her softer influences that Paul had doubted as to his adherence to the letter which he had written to her, breaking off his engagement. When she told him of her wrongs and of her love; of his promise and his former devotion to her; when she assured him that she had given up everything in life for him, and threw her arms round him, looking into his eyes;--then he would almost yield. But when, what the traveller called the breeding of the wild cat, showed itself;--and when, having escaped from her, he thought of Hetta Carbury and of her breeding,--he was fully determined that, let his fate be what it might, it should not be that of being the husband of Mrs Hurtle. That he was in a mass of troubles from which it would be very difficult for him to extricate himself he was well aware;--but if it were true that Mr Hurtle was alive, that fact might help him. She certainly had declared him to be,-- not separated, or even divorced,--but dead. And if it were true also that she had fought a duel with one husband, that also ought to be a reason why a gentleman should object to become her second husband. These facts would at any rate justify himself to himself, and would enable himself to break from his engagement without thinking himself to be a false traitor.