t was a colossal price to pay for honor and friendship, but while they
had been brigands and robbers for hundreds of years, the Arranstouns had
not been dishonorable men, and had once or twice in their history done a
great and generous thing.

Michael was not of the character which lauded itself, indeed he was
never introspective nor thought of himself at all. He was just strong
and living and breathing, his actions governed by an inherited sense of
the fitness of things for a gentleman's code, which, unless it was
swamped, as on one occasion it had been by violent passion, very seldom
led him wrong.

Now he determined never to look ahead or picture the blankness of his
days as they must become with no hope of ever seeing Sabine. He supposed
vaguely that the pain would grow less in time. He should have to play a
lot of games, and take tremendous interest in his tenants and his
property and perhaps presently go into Parliament. And if all that
failed, he could make some expedition into the wilds again. He was too
healthy and well-balanced to have even in this moment of deep suffering
any morbid ideas.

When he had changed his soaking garments, he came back into his
sitting-room and pulled Binko upon his knees. The dog and his fat
wrinkles seemed some kind of comfort to him.

"She remembered you, Binko, old man," he said, caressing the creature's
ears. "She is the sweetest little darling in all the world. You would
have loved her soft brown hair and her round dimpled cheek. And she
loves your master, Binko, just as he loves her; she has forgiven him for
everything of long ago--and if she could, she would come back here, and
live with us and make us divinely happy--as we believed she was going to
do once when we were young."

And then he thought suddenly of Henry's home--the stately Elizabethan
house amidst luxuriant, peaceful scenery--not grim and strong like
Arranstoun--though she preferred gaunt castles, evidently, since she
had bought Heronac for her own. But the thought of Henry's home and her
adorning it brought too intimate pictures to his imagination; they
galled him so that at last he could not bear it and started to his feet.

It was possible to part from her and go away, but it was not possible to
contemplate calmly the fact of her being the wife of another man.
Material things came always more vividly to Michael than spiritual ones,
and the vision he had conjured up was one of Sabine encircled by Henry's