The thought that Rose Marie loved him, the remembrance of that day when he had held her in his arms, feeling her young body quivering at his touch, seeing her eyes glowing in response to his ardour, her exquisite lips moist with the promise of a kiss, these had been his life during the past few months; they had been the very breath of his body, the blood in his veins, the strength which bore him through all that he had set himself to do.
The winning of name and estate, and then a reconquering of his snowdrop, with a foregone certainty of victory ahead, that had been his existence.
A foregone certainty of victory! How oft had he exulted at the thought, drugging his despair with the intoxicating potion of hope, and now one brief word from her and defeat had been more hopeless, more complete than before.
"I am his wife," she said; "his wife in the sight of God; his wife despite the infamy in which you bore the leading hand!"
Michael had thought of everything, had envisaged everything save this: that Rose Marie would turn from him, because she loved the other. Loyalty and love, love and passion, were all synonymous to the impatient ardour, the proud defiance of this splendid blackguard—splendid in this, that he never swerved from the path into which he had once engaged his footsteps, never looked back with purposeless longing, and neither cursed Fate nor ever gave way to despair.
Even now, he pulled himself together, and within half an hour of the Legros' departure from his house he was on his way to see his friend Sir William Jones, the Attorney-General, first, and thence to his cousin's house on the outskirts of Piccadilly.
Rupert Kestyon—by the king's mandate no longer Lord of Stowmaries now—still occupied the same house into which he had made triumphant entry some two years ago on the death of the old earl. It was an ancient family mansion built a century and a half back, with gigantic and elaborate coat of arms carved in stone above the majestic porch. The serving-man who in response to Michael's peremptory knocking opened the massive door to him, gave no outward sign that so great a change had come, and with appalling suddenness, in the fortunes of his master.
He even addressed Michael as "sir" and spoke of "his lordship" being still in his room upstairs.
Impatiently waving the man aside, Michael threw hat and cloak down in the hall, and not waiting to be formally announced he ran quickly up the broad staircase. He knew the house well, for in childhood he had oft been in it, when his mother, holding him by the hand, came to ask for pecuniary assistance from the wealthy kinsman.