oved.

It is one thing to extract a promise from The Woman that she will turn
to you for help if ever your help should be needed (knowing that there
could be no greater joy than to serve her at any cost whatsoever,
though it led to death or ruin), but it is quite another thing when
that help is invited for the benefit of the successful rival!

To go to the world's end for Lucille were a very small matter to
Ormonde Delorme--but to go across the road for the man who had won her
away, was not.

For Dam _had_ won her away from him, Delorme considered, inasmuch as
he had brought him to Monksmead, time after time, had seen him falling
in love with Lucille, had received his confidences, and spoken no
warning word. Had he said but "No poaching, Delorme," nothing more
would have been necessary; he would have kept away thenceforth, and
smothered the flame ere it became a raging and consuming fire. No, de
Warrenne had served him badly in not telling him plainly that there
was an understanding between him and his cousin, in letting him sink
more and more deeply over head and ears in love, in letting him go on
until he proposed to Lucille and learnt from her that while she liked
him better than any man in the world but one--she did not love him,
and that, frankly, yes, she _did_ love somebody else, and it was
hopeless for him to hope....

He read the letter again:--

"MY DEAR ORMONDE,

"This is a begging letter, and I should
loathe to write it, under the circumstances, to any
man but such a one as you. For I am going to
ask a great deal of you and to appeal to that nobleness
of character for which I have always admired
you and which made you poor Dam's hero from
Lower School days at Wellingborough until you left
Sandhurst (and, alas! quarrelled with him--or
rather with his memory--about me). That was a
sad blow to me, and I tell you again as I told you
before, Dam had not the faintest notion that _I_ cared
for _him_ and would not have told me that he cared
for me had I not shown it. Your belief that he
didn't trouble to warn you because he had me safe
is utterly wrong, absurd, and unjust.

"When you did me the great honour and paid
me the undeserved and tremendous compliment of
asking me to marry you, and I told you that I
could not, and _why_ I could not, I never dreamed
that Dam could care for me in that way, and I
knew that I should never marry any one at all
unless he