o be his own
wife, and she had then told him that she was to become the wife of
the owner of that domain. He remembered the blow as though it had
been struck but yesterday, and yet the pain of the blow had not been
long enduring. But though then rejected he had always been the chosen
friend of the woman,--a friend chosen after an especial fashion. When
he had loved another woman this friend had resented his defection
with all a woman's jealousy. He had saved the husband's life, and had
then become also the husband's friend, after that cold fashion which
an obligation will create. Then the husband had been jealous, and
dissension had come, and the ill-matched pair had been divided, with
absolute ruin to both of them, as far as the material comforts and
well-being of life were concerned. Then he, too, had been ejected, as
it were, out of the world, and it had seemed to him as though Laura
Standish and Robert Kennedy had been the inhabitants of another
hemisphere. Now he was about to see them both again, both separately;
and to become the medium of some communication between them. He knew,
or thought that he knew, that no communication could avail anything.

It was dark night when he was driven up to the door of Loughlinter
House in a fly from the town of Callender. When he first made the
journey, now some six or seven years since, he had done so with Mr.
Ratler, and he remembered well that circumstance. He remembered also
that on his arrival Lady Laura had scolded him for having travelled
in such company. She had desired him to seek other friends,--friends
higher in general estimation, and nobler in purpose. He had done so,
partly at her instance, and with success. But Mr. Ratler was now
somebody in the world, and he was nobody. And he remembered also how
on that occasion he had been troubled in his mind in regard to a
servant, not as yet knowing whether the usages of the world did or
did not require that he should go so accompanied. He had taken the
man, and had been thoroughly ashamed of himself for doing so. He had
no servant now, no grandly developed luggage, no gun, no elaborate
dress for the mountains. On that former occasion his heart had been
very full when he reached Loughlinter, and his heart was full now.
Then he had resolved to say a few words to Lady Laura, and he had
hardly known how best to say them. Now he would be called upon to
say a few to Lady Laura's husband, and the task would be almost as
difficult