ll Dane, the quaint dignity of the
Elizabethan manor at Paulyn Dorlocke, the soft hills near Mertounhurst,
where myriads of harebells grew and swayed in the summer breeze as it
swept them; and the clear lake in the park at Roxholm, where the deer
came to drink, and as a boy he had lain in his boat and rocked among
the lily-pads in the early morning, when the great white water-flowers
spread their wax cups broad and seemed to hold the gold of the sun. His
life had been so full of beauty and fair things; wheresoever his lot
had fallen at any time he had had fair days, fair nights, and earth's
loveliness to behold. And all he had loved and joyed in, he had known
she would love and joy in, too. What a chatelaine she would make, he
had thought; how the simple rustic folk would worship her! What a fit
setting for her beauty would seem the grand saloons of Osmonde House!
What a fit and queen-like wearer she would be for the marvellous jewels
which had crowned fair heads and clasped fair throats and arms for
centuries! There were diamonds all England had heard rumour of, and he
had even lost himself in a lover's fancy of an hour when he himself
would clasp a certain dazzling collar round the column of her throat,
and never yet had he given himself to the fancy but in his vision he
had laid his lips on the warm whiteness when 'twas done, and lost
himself in a passionate kiss--and she had turned and smiled a heavenly
answering bridal smile.

This he remembered now, clinching his hands until he drove the nails
into his palms.

"I have been madder than I thought," he said. "Yes, 'twas madness--but
'twas Nature, too! Good God!" his forehead dropping in his hand and he
panting. "I feel as if she had been a year my wife, and another man had
torn her from my breast. And yet she has not been mine an hour--nor
ever will be--and she is Dunstanwolde's, who, while I wake in torment,
dreams in bliss, as is his honest, heavenly right." Even to the torment
he had no claim, but in being torn by it seemed but robbing another
man. What a night of impotent rage it was, of unreasoning, hopeless
hatred of himself, of his fate, and even of the man who was his rival,
though at his worst he reviled his frenzy, which could be so base as to
rend unjustly a being without blame.

'Twas not himself who hated, but the madness in his blood which for
this space ran riot.

At dawn, when the first glimmer of light began to pale the skies, he
found himself s