both Moravia and Sabine's eyes. It gratified
Sabine's vanity. She knew this, she was quite cognizant of the fact that
it pleased her. She felt glad and proud that she should occupy so
exalted a place in the world's eyes, as she would do as his wife. Surely
all the great duties and interests of that position would make life
very fair. It would be such peace and relief when the divorce
proceedings would come on and be finished with--a much less tiresome
affair in Scotland, she had heard, than in an English court.

When Michael Arranstoun got Henry's wire asking him to dine, he laughed
bitterly. There was something so cynically entertaining in the idea of
the whole situation! He was being asked out to meet the wife whom he was
madly in love with, and was preparing to divorce for desertion, so that
she might marry the giver of the invitation!

He was tempted to accept for a second or two, the desire to see her
again was growing almost more than he could bear; but at this period he
had still strength to refuse--and then, as the days went on, it seemed
that nothing gave him any pleasure, and that constantly and incessantly
his thoughts turned to one subject. If there had been no friendship or
honor mixed up in the thing, nothing would have been simpler than to sit
down and write to Henry telling him plainly that Sabine was his
wife--and that she must choose between them. But then he remembered
that, apart from all friendship, Sabine had already plainly expressed
her choice, and that he had absolutely no right to hold her in any way
since he had given her permission all those years ago to make what she
chose of her life. He had not yet instructed his lawyers to begin actual
proceedings--he was in a furnace of indecision and unrest. He would
like just somehow to get Sabine to Arranstoun first--then, if after that
she still plainly showed that she loved Henry, he would make himself go
ahead with the freedom scheme; but if he commenced actual proceedings
now, by no possibility could she come to Arranstoun--and this idea--to
get her to Arranstoun, began to be an obsession. Just in proportion as
his nature was wild and rebellious, so the mad longing grew and grew in
him to induce her to come once more into his house.

And it would seem that fate at first intended to assist him in this, for
on the second of November the party went up North to stay with Rose
Forster, Henry's sister, at Ebbsworth for a great ball she was giving
for