nown to the public, called
Zoug-Zoug.

He remembered that day at the Hotel St. Malo! Well, the bolt was shot:
the worst was over. Quid refert? Justify himself?

Certainly, to all but Delia Gasgoyne.

Thousands of men did the same--did it in cold blood, without one honest
feeling. He did it, at least under a powerful influence. He could not
help but smile now at the thought of how he had filled both sides of
the equation. On his father's side, bringing down the mad record
from Naseby; on his mother's, true to the heathen, by following his
impulses--sacred to primitive man, justified by spear, arrow, and
a strong arm. Why sheet home this as a scandal? How did they--the
libellers--know but that he had married the girl? Exactly. He would see
to that. He would play his game with open sincerity now. He could
have wished secrecy for Delia Gasgoyne, and for his grandfather and
grandmother,--he was not wilfully brutal,--but otherwise he had no shame
at all; he would stand openly for his right. Better one honest passion
than a life of deception and miserable compromise. A British M.P.?--He
had thrown away his reputation, said the papers. By this? The girl was
no man's wife, he was no woman's husband!

Marry her? Yes, he would marry her; she should be his wife. His people?
It was a pity. Poor old people--they would fret and worry. He had been
selfish, had not thought of them? Well, who could foresee this outrage
of journalism? The luck had been dead against him. Did he not know
plenty of men in London--he was going to say the Commons, but he was
fairer to the Commons than it, as a body, would be to him--who did much
worse? These had escaped: the hunters had been after him. What would
he do? Take the whip? He got to his feet with an oath. Take the whip?
Never--never! He would fight this thing tooth and nail. Had he come
to England to let them use him for a sensation only--a sequence of
surprises, to end in a tragedy, all for the furtive pleasure of the
British breakfast-table? No, by the Eternal! What had the first Gaston
done? He had fought--fought Villiers and others, and had held up his
head beside his King and Rupert till the hour of Naseby.

When the summer was over he would return to Paris, to London. The
journalist--punish him? No; too little--a product of his time. But the
British people he would fight, and he would not give up Ridley Court.
He could throw the game over when it was all his, but never when it was
going