Robert Molyneux's struggle was over. Eva's face was gone now
altogether. He only felt a mad joy in yielding, and a wild desire for
the minutes to pass till he had traversed that gray road back. The
coachman drove hard and his horses were flecked with foam, but from
the windows Robert Molyneux kept continually urging him, offering him
greater and greater rewards for his doing the journey with all speed.

Half way up the cypress avenue to his friend's house a woman with a
shawl about her head glided from the shadow and signalled to the
darkly flushed face at the carriage window. Robert Molyneux shouted to
the man to stop. He sprang from the carriage and lifted the woman in.
Then he flung the coachman a handful of gold and silver. 'To
Rossatorc,' he said, and the man turned round and once more whipped up
his tired horses. The woman laughed as Robert Molyneux caught her in
his arms. It was the fierce laughter of the lost. 'I came to meet
you,' she said, 'because I knew you must come.'

From that day, when Robert Molyneux led the woman over the threshold
of his house, he was seen no more in the usual places of his
fellow-men. He refused to see any one who came. His wedding-day passed
by. Lord Dunlough had ridden furiously to have an explanation with the
fellow and to horsewhip him when that was done, but he found the great
door of Rossatorc closed in his face. Every one knew Robert Molyneux
was living in shame with Mauryeen Holion. Lady Eva grew pale and
paler, and drooped and withered in sorrow and shame, and presently her
father took her away, and their house was left to servants. Burly
neighbouring squires rode up and knocked with their riding-whips at
Rossatorc door to remonstrate with Robert Molyneux, for his father's
sake or for his own, but met no answer. All the servants were gone
except a furtive-eyed French valet and a woman he called his wife, and
these were troubled with no notions of respectability. After a time
people gave up trying to interfere. The place got a bad name. The
gardens were neglected and the house was half in ruins. No one ever
saw Mauryeen Holion's face except it might be at a high window of the
castle, when some belated huntsman taking a short-cut across the park
would catch a glimpse of a wild face framed in black hair at an upper
window, the flare of the winter sunset lighting it up, it might be, as
with a radiance from hell. Sir Robert drank, they said, and
rack-rented his people far wor