uty. He was an eldest son, the heir
to an earldom and a vast estate; he wished to lead a distinguished,
comfortable, and edifying existence. His wife would be a helpmate, not a
snare; the mother of his children, not the light of his eyes. But what a
difference in Robert's case--with his capacity for worship, for really
intense and absorbing passion. All this was especially transparent to
Reckage, who, as a man of the world, had watched his friend for months,
detecting the shattering physical effects of an iron restraint imposed
on every thought, mood, and inclination. He had enjoyed the spectacle:
it was a good fight--this sharp, unceasing struggle between mere human
nature, young, vigorous, sane, indefatigable, and an upright soul full
of tenderness, yet forced to live in constant warfare. Awe, too, had
mingled in Reckage's sensations while he looked on; something of pity
and terror stirred under the callous muscle which he called his heart at
the sight of a voiceless, stifled despair outside the range of his
personal experience, though not entirely beyond his sympathy. All men
did not love after this fashion, he knew, but humanity was full of
surprises, and he had been too calm a student of other men's lives to
feel astonishment at any fresh revelation either of their pain, their
perversity, or their humours. He had felt so sure, however, that Robert
would, in the end, get the better of that unhappy attachment; everything
in the process of time had to surrender to reason, and it was not
possible, he thought, that a strong, self-reliant man could long remain
subdued by a mere infatuation.

"And why doesn't he think of his health?" insisted Reckage; "it is
really going between all this sleeplessness, and fasting, and over-work.
Flesh and blood cannot bear the strain. He is never idle for one moment.
He is afraid of brooding."

It was with these sentiments of fear for the one creature he believed
in, and hostility toward the woman who had presumed to interfere with
the progress of that clear spirit, that he found himself at Almouth
House. The blinds of the dining-room were but partially down. He could
see the menservants within preparing the table which, set for two
covers, showed a pretty display of cut-glass, flowers, old silver, and
shining damask under the yellow rays of the lit candles. Some family
portraits by Gainsborough and Reynolds, a Holbein, and a Vandyck, with
lamps shining like footlights beneath them, wer