"Oh! how divine!"
And it was indeed. A gem of the finest period of early Gothic architecture, adorned with all trophies which love, fear and contrition could compel from the art of the ages. Glorious colored lights swept down in shafts from matchless stained glass, and the high altar was a blaze of richness, while beautiful paintings and tapestries covered the walls.
It was gorgeous and sumptuous, and unlike anything else in England or Scotland. It might have been the private chapel of a proud, voluptuous Cardinal in Rome's great days.
"Why is that one little window plain?" Sabine asked.
Then Michael answered with a cynical note in his voice:
"It is left for me—I, who am the last of them, to put up some expiatory offering, I expect. Rapine and violence are in the blood," and then he laughed lightly, and led her back through the gloom to his sitting-room. There was a strange, fierce light in his bright blue eyes, which the child-woman did not see, and which, if she had perceived, she would not have understood any more than he understood it himself—for no concrete thought had yet come to him about the future. Only, there underneath was that mighty force, relentless, inexorable, of heredity, causing the instinct which had dominated the Arranstouns for eleven hundred years.
He did not seek to detain his guest and promised bride—but, with great courtesy, he showed her the way down the stairs of the lawn, and so through the postern into the park, and he watched her slender form trip off towards the gate which was opposite the Inn, her last words ringing in his ears in answer to his final question.
"No, I shall not fail—I will leave the Crown at nine o'clock exactly on Thursday."
Then turning, he retraced his steps to his sitting-room, and there found Henry Fordyce returned.