"Alas! all is well?" said the priest, half aloud, and then he knelt by the window and prayed fervently—without telling his beads.
But, at breakfast, Sabine's eyes were dry again, and she seemed quite calm. She, too, had held communion with herself, and her will had once more resumed the mastery. This should be the last exhibition of weakness—and the last feeling of weakness; and as she would suppress the outward signs, so she would crush the inner emotion. All life looked smiling. She was young, healthy and rich. She had inspired the devoted love of a good and great man, whose position would give scope for her ambitions, whose intellect was a source of pleasure and joy to her, and whose tenderness would smooth all her path. What right had she to have even a crumpled rose leaf! None in the world.
She must get accustomed even to hearing of Michael, and perhaps to meeting him again face to face, since Henry was never to know—or, at least, not for years perhaps, when she had been so long happily married that the knowledge would create no jar. And at all events, he need not know—of the afterwards—that should remain forever locked in her heart. Then she resolutely turned to lighter thoughts—her clothes in Paris, the pleasure to see Moravia again—the excitement of her trip to London, where she had never been, except to pass through that once long ago.
The Père Anselme came to the station with her, and as he closed the door of the reserved carriage she was in, he said:
"Blessings be upon your head, my child. And, whatever comes, may the good God direct you into peace."
Then he turned upon his heel, his black eyes dim—for the autumn months would be long with only Madame Imogen for companion, beside his flock—and the sea.
Michael had got back from Paris utterly disgusted with life, sick with himself. Bitterly resentful against fate for creating such a tangled skein, and dangling happiness in front of him only to snatch it away again. He went up to Arranstoun and tried to play his part in the rejoicings at his return. He opened the house, engaged a full staff of servants, and filled it with guests. He shot with frantic eagerness for one week, and then with indifference the next. Whatever he may have done wrong in his life, his punishment had come. He had naturally an iron will, and when he began to use it to calm his emotions, a better state of things might set in, but for the time being he was just drifting, and sorrow was his friend.
His suite at Arranstoun—which he had never seen since the day after his wedding, having gone up to London that very next night, and from there made all his arrangements for the China trip—gave him a shock—he who had nerves of steel—and into the chapel he loathed to go. His one consolation was that Binko, now seven years old, had not transferred his affection to Alexander Armstrong, with whom he had spent the time; but after an hour or two had rapturously appeared to remember his master, and now never, if he could help it, left his side.
Michael took to reading books—no habit of his youth!—although his shrewd mind had not left him in the usual plight of blank ignorance, which is often the portion of a splendid, young athlete leaving Eton! But now he studied subjects seriously, and the whys and wherefores of things; and he grew rather to enjoy the evenings alone, between the goings and comings of his parties, when, buried in a huge chair before his log fire, with only Binko's snorts for company, he could pore over some volume of interest. He studied his family records, too, getting all sorts of interesting documents out of his muniment room.
What a fierce, brutal lot they had always been! No wonder the chapel had to be so gloriously filled—and then there came to his memory the one little window which was still plain, and how he had told Sabine that he supposed it had been left for him to garnish—as an expiatory offering—the race being so full of rapine and sin!