orn look stole over his face: he seemed to lose the last of his
youth in an instant.

What the woman's quicker insight had discovered days since, the man's
slower perception had only realized in the past night. The pang that had
wrung him when he heard Allan's avowal had set the truth self-revealed
before Midwinter for the first time. He had been conscious of looking at
Miss Gwilt with new eyes and a new mind, on the next occasion when they
met after the memorable interview in Major Milroy's garden; but he had
never until now known the passion that she had roused in him for what
it really was. Knowing it at last, feeling it consciously in full
possession of him, he had the courage which no man with a happier
experience of life would have possessed--the courage to recall what
Allan had confided to him, and to look resolutely at the future through
his own grateful remembrances of the past.

Steadfastly, through the sleepless hours of the night, he had bent his
mind to the conviction that he must conquer the passion which had taken
possession of him, for Allan's sake; and that the one way to conquer
it was--to go. No after-doubt as to the sacrifice had troubled him when
morning came; and no after-doubt troubled him now. The one question that
kept him hesitating was the question of leaving Thorpe Ambrose. Though
Mr. Brock's letter relieved him from all necessity of keeping watch in
Norfolk for a woman who was known to be in Somersetshire; though the
duties of the steward's office were duties which might be safely left
in Mr. Bashwood's tried and trustworthy hands--still, admitting these
considerations, his mind was not easy at the thought of leaving Allan,
at a time when a crisis was approaching in Allan's life.

He slung the knapsack loosely over his shoulder and put the question to
his conscience for the last time. "Can you trust yourself to see her,
day by day as you must see her--can you trust yourself to hear him talk
of her, hour by hour, as you must hear him--if you stay in this house?"
Again the answer came, as it had come all through the night. Again his
heart warned him, in the very interests of the friendship that he held
sacred, to go while the time was his own; to go before the woman who
had possessed herself of his love had possessed herself of his power of
self-sacrifice and his sense of gratitude as well.

He looked round the room mechanically before he turned to leave it.
Every remembrance of the conve