When they were beyond the range of Miss Medora's attentive eye, he began abruptly: "I have not come here before, dear Miss Percy, because I had to conquer my selfish disappointment. You cannot fail to know what my own hopes were. But I have conquered and we will never allude to the matter again. My friendship for Warner is now uppermost and it is of him I wish to speak."
"Yes? Yes?"
"Last night I sat late with him. He is full of hope, of youth--renewed youth must seem a wonderful possession to a man: we are so prone to let it slip by unheeded! Well, he is changed. I never hoped for half as much. He tells me that the demon has fled. He has never a sting of its tail. That may be because he never really craved drink save when writing--until these last years. It is this I wish to talk to you about. You have the most solemn responsibility that ever descended upon a woman: a beautiful soul, a beautiful mind in your keeping. If you ever relax your vigilance--ever love him less----"
"I never shall."
"No," he said with a sigh, "I don't fancy you will. But you must never leave him. He is not weak in one sense, but in loneliness he might turn to composition again, and there could be but one result."
"But if he had done without stimulant for a long while--was quite happy--well, do not you think I might be stimulant enough?" She laughed and blushed, but she brought it out.
Lord Hunsdon shook his head. "No, I do not believe that even you could work that miracle. I have known him since we were at Cambridge together, and I am convinced that there is some strange lack in that marvellous brain which renders his creative faculty helpless until fired by alcohol. If the human brain is a mystery how much more so is genius? Much is said and written, but we are none the wiser. But this peculiar fact I do know. The island records and traditions tell us that all his forefathers save one were abstemious, dignified, normal men, mentally active and important. But his grandfather, who spent the greater part of his time in London, was one of the most dissolute men of the Regency. He was a wit at court, a personal friend of the Prince Regent. There was no form of dissipation he did not cultivate, and he died of excess at a comparatively early age. By what would seem to be a special tinkering of the devil with the work of Almighty God those lusts have taken possession of one section of Byam Warner's brain only, diseased it, redistributed its particles in a manner that has resulted in the abnormal faculty we call genius, but deprived it of that final energy which would permit those great powers to find their outlet without artificial stimulant. These may be fanciful ideas, but they have become fixed in my mind, and I have come here to-day to ask you to make me a solemn promise."