ly on the stronger guard for his knowledge that it was a
concomitant of his inherent sensibility. He quite yielded to it for a
time; and though 'twas sharpened by his comparison of the Margaret he
had just left, with the pretty, soft-smiling Madge of other days, that
comparison eventually supplanted self-pity with pity for her, a
feeling no less laden with sorrow.

He dared not think of what her perverseness might yet lead her to. For
himself he saw nothing but hopeless sorrow, unless she could be
brought back to her better self. But, alas, he by whose influence that
end might be achieved--for he could not believe that her heart had
quite cast him out--was flying from her, and years might pass ere he
should see her again: meanwhile, how intolerable would life be to him!
His heart, with the instinct of self-protection, sought some interest
in which it might find relief.

He thought of the cause for which he was fighting. That must suffice;
it must take the place of wife and love. Cold, impersonal, inadequate
as it seemed now, he knew that in the end it would suffice to fill
great part of that inner heart which she had occupied. He turned to it
with the kindling affection which a man ever has for the resource that
is left him when he is scorned elsewhere. And he felt his ardour for
it fanned by his deepened hate for the opposing cause, a hate
intensified by the circumstance that his rival was of that cause. For
that rival's sake, he hated with a fresh implacability the whole royal
side and everything pertaining to it. He pressed his teeth together,
and resolved to make that side pay as dearly as lay in him to make it,
for what he had lost of his wife's love, and for what she had lost of
her probity.

And the man himself, Falconer! 'Twas he that commanded this night's
wild attempt, if she had spoken truly. Well, Falconer should not
succeed this night, and Philip, with a kind of bitter elation, thanked
God 'twas through him that the attempt should be the more utterly
defeated. He patted his horse--a faithful beast that had known but a
short rest since it had travelled over the same road in the opposite
direction--and used all means to keep it at the best pace compatible
with its endurance. Forward it sped, in long, unvarying bounds, seeing
the road in the dark, or rather in the strange dusky light yielded by
the snow-covered earth and seeming rather to originate there than to
be reflected from the impenetrable obscurity