e strength of his
which rendered possible to him a course that no weaker man would dare
pursue. And in this reflection her pride in him increased, and she
thanked God for a lover who in all things was a giant among men.

But Sir John Killigrew did not die. He hovered between this world and a
better one for some seven days, at the end of which he began to recover.
By October he was abroad again, gaunt and pale, reduced to half the bulk
that had been his before, a mere shadow of a man.

One of his first visits was to Godolphin Court. He went to remonstrate
with Rosamund upon her betrothal, and he did so at the request of her
brother. But his remonstrances were strangely lacking in the force that
she had looked for.

The odd fact is that in his near approach to death, and with his earthly
interest dwindling, Sir John had looked matters frankly in the face,
and had been driven to the conclusion--a conclusion impossible to him
in normal health--that he had got no more than he deserved. He realized
that he had acted unworthily, if unconscious at the time of the
unworthiness of what he did; that the weapons with which he had fought
Sir Oliver were not the weapons that become a Gentleman or in which
there is credit to be won. He perceived that he had permitted his old
enmity for the house of Tressilian, swollen by a sense of injury lately
suffered in the matter of the licence to build at Smithick, to warp his
judgment and to persuade him that Sir Oliver was all he had dubbed him.
He realized that jealousy, too, had taken a hand in the matter. Sir
Oliver's exploits upon the seas had brought him wealth, and with this
wealth he was building up once more the Tressilian sway in those parts,
which Ralph Tressilian had so outrageously diminished, so that he
threatened to eclipse the importance of the Killigrews of Arwenack.

Nevertheless, in the hour of reaction he did not go so far as to admit
that Sir Oliver Tressilian was a fit mate for Rosamund Godolphin. She
and her brother had been placed in his care by their late father, and he
had nobly discharged his tutelage until such time as Peter had come to
full age. His affection for Rosamund was tender as that of a lover,
but tempered by a feeling entirely paternal. He went very near to
worshipping her, and when all was said, when he had cleared his mind
of all dishonest bias, he still found overmuch to dislike in Oliver
Tressilian, and the notion of his becoming Rosamund's husband