said. "'Twas Fate ordained it so--and
I would not be your rival, for we have loved each other too long. I
must wait to find another lady, and she will be Countess of
Dunstanwolde."

He bore himself composedly until they had exchanged the final
courtesies and parted for the night, and having mounted the stairs had
passed through the long gallery which led him to his apartments. When
he opened the door it seemed to his fancy that the wax tapers burned
but dimly amid the shadows of the great room, and that the pictured
faces hanging on the walls looked white and gazed as if aghast.

The veins were swollen in his temples and throbbed hard, his blood
coursed hot and cold alternately, there were drops starting out upon
his brow. He had not known his passions were so tempestuous and that he
could be prey to such pangs of anguish and of rage. Hitherto he had
held himself in check, but now 'twas as if he had lost his hold on the
reins which controlled galloping steeds. The blood of men who had been
splendid savages centuries ago ran wild within him. His life for thirty
years had been noble and just and calm. Being endowed with all gifts by
Nature and his path made broad by Fortune, he had dealt in high honour
with all bestowed upon him. But now for this night he knew he was a
different man, and that his hour had come.

He stood in the centre of the chamber and tossed up his hands, laughing
a mad, low, harsh laugh.

"Not as Hugh de Mertoun came back," he said. "Good God! no, no!"

The rage of him, body and soul, made him sick and suffocated him.

"Could a man go mad in such case?" he cried. "I am not sane! I cannot
reason! I would not have believed it."

His arteries so throbbed that he tore open the lace at his throat and
flung back his head. "I cannot reason!" he said. "I know now how men
_kill_. And yet he is as sweet a soul as Heaven ever made." He paced
the great length of the chamber to and fro.

"'Tis not Nature," he said. "It cannot be borne--he to hold her to his
breast, and _I--I_ to stand aside. Her eyes--her lovely, melting,
woman's eyes!"

Men have been mad before for less of the same torment, and he whose
nature was fire, and whose imagination had the power to torture him by
picturing all he had lost and all another man had won, was only saved
because he knew his frenzy.

"To this place itself she will be brought," he thought. "In these rooms
she will move, wife and queen and mistress. He will so worshi