nd whose hearts he wins, as 'twould be easy for him
to win any woman's who believed his wooing face and voice--Nay, 'twould
be as dastardly as if an impregnable fortress should open all its
batteries upon a little child who played before it. And he stands
laughing among his mocking crew--triumphing, boasting--in cold
blood--of what he plans to do months to come. Fate grant he may not
come near me often. Some day I should break his devil's neck."

He found himself striding about the room. He was burning with rage
against the unfairness of it all, as he had burned when, a mere child,
he pondered on the story of Wildairs. To-day he was a man, yet his
passion of rebellion was curiously similar in its nature to his young
fury. Now, as then, there was naught to be done to help what seemed
like Fate. In a world made up of men all more or less hunters of the
weak, ready to accept the theory that all things defenceless and lovely
are fair game for the stronger, a man whose view was fairer was an
abnormality.

"I do not belong to my time," he said, flinging himself into his chair
again and speaking grimly. "I am too early--or too late--for it, and
must be content to seem a fool."

"There is a Fate," he said a little later, having sat a space gazing at
the floor and deep in thought--"there is a Fate which seems to link me
to the fortunes of these people. My first knowledge of their
wretchedness was a thing which sank deep. There are things a human
being perhaps remembers his whole life through--and strangely enough
they are often small incidents. I do not think there will ever pass
from me my memory of the way the rain swept over the park lands and
bare trees the day I stood with my Lord Dunstanwolde at the Long
Gallery window, and he told me of the new-born child dragged shrieking
from beneath its dead mother's body."

Some days later he went to Camylott to pass a few weeks in the country
with his parents, who were about to set forth upon a journey to Italy,
where they were to visit in state a palace of a Roman noble who had
been a friend of his Grace's youth, they having met and become
companions when the Duke first visited Rome in making the grand tour.
'Twas a visit long promised to the Roman gentleman who had more than
once been a guest of their household in England; and but for affairs of
his Grace of Marlborough, which Roxholm had bound himself to keep eye
on, he also would have been of the party. As matters stood, ho