"This other matter?" Was he mad, she wondered.

Could any other matter signify in such a moment.

"This matter that concerns myself; and all my future, oh, so very
closely. This thing that Blood believed, that prompted him..., that ...
that you are not indifferent to me." He saw the fair face change colour
and grow troubled once more.

"Indifferent to you?" said she. "Why, no. We have been good friends; we
shall continue so, I hope, my lord."

"Friends! Good friends?" He was between dismay and bitterness. "It is
not your friendship only that I ask, Arabella. You heard what I said,
what I reported. You will not say that Peter Blood was wrong?"

Gently she sought to disengage her hand, the trouble in her face
increasing. A moment he resisted; then, realizing what he did, he set
her free.

"Arabella!" he cried on a note of sudden pain.

"I have friendship for you, my lord. But only friendship." His castle of
hopes came clattering down about him, leaving him a little stunned. As
he had said, he was no coxcomb. Yet there was something that he did
not understand. She confessed to friendship, and it was in his power
to offer her a great position, one to which she, a colonial planter's
niece, however wealthy, could never have aspired even in her dreams.
This she rejected, yet spoke of friendship. Peter Blood had been
mistaken, then. How far had he been mistaken? Had he been as mistaken in
her feelings towards himself as he obviously was in her feelings towards
his lordship? In that case ... His reflections broke short. To speculate
was to wound himself in vain. He must know. Therefore he asked her with
grim frankness:

"Is it Peter Blood?"

"Peter Blood?" she echoed. At first she did not understand the purport
of his question. When understanding came, a flush suffused her face.

"I do not know," she said, faltering a little.

This was hardly a truthful answer. For, as if an obscuring veil had
suddenly been rent that morning, she was permitted at last to see Peter
Blood in his true relations to other men, and that sight, vouchsafed
her twenty-four hours too late, filled her with pity and regret and
yearning.

Lord Julian knew enough of women to be left in no further doubt. He
bowed his head so that she might not see the anger in his eyes, for as
a man of honour he took shame in that anger which as a human being he
could not repress.

And because Nature in him was stronger--as it is in most of us--than
training,