weet, in the very teeth of the gale
too! But now you will have had enough of my news and more than enough.
I write to you more freely, you see, than for a long time past, being
myself more free of spirit. And therefore I dare add this, in all and
every case, my darling, God keep you. And remember, should you weary of
wandering, that not only the doors of Brockhurst, but the doors of my
heart, stand forever wide open to welcome you home.--Yours always,

K. C."

Reading which gentle, yet in a sense daring, words, Richard's shame
took on another complexion, but one by no means calculated to mitigate
the burning of it. His treachery towards de Vallorbes became almost
vulgar and of small moment beside his cruelty to this superbly
magnanimous woman, his mother. For, all these years, determinately and
of set purpose, defiant of every better impulse, he had hardened his
heart against her. To differ from her, to cherish that which was
unsympathetic to her, to put aside every tradition in which she had
nurtured him, to love that which she condemned, to condemn that which
she loved--and this, if silently, yet unswervingly--had been the ruling
purpose of his action. That which had its origin in passionate revolt
against his own unhappy disfigurement, had come to be an interest and
object in itself. In this quarrel with her--a quarrel, intimate,
pre-natal, anterior to consciousness and to volition--he found the
justification of his every lapse, his every crookedness of conduct and
of thought. Since he could not reach Almighty God, and strike at the
eternal First Cause which he held responsible for the inalienable wrong
done to him, he would strike, with cold-blooded persistence, at the
woman whom Almighty God had permitted to be His instrument in the
infliction of that wrong. And to where had that sustained purpose of
striking led him? Even--so he judged just now--to the dishonour and
desolation of to-day, following upon the sacrilegious licence of last
night.

All this Richard saw with the alternately groping, benumbed, mental
vision and the glaring, mental nakedness of breeding fever. Small
wonder that looking for comfort, for promise of restoration, he found
none in things material, in things intellectual, in others, or in
himself! He felt outcasted beyond hope of redemption, but not
repentant, hardly remorseful even, only aware of all that which had
happened, and of his own state. For Lady Calmady's letter was to him
littl