As the door closed after her the candle guttered and went out in the gust of air.
For a moment or two the Earl walked up and down in the dark, crossing and recrossing the patch of moonlight.
Then he returned to the withdrawing-room.
It was empty, the window still stood open on to the terrace, and the air was full of the pungent smell of the flowers without.
Rose Lyndwood seated himself at the table where Miss Chressham had written, earlier that evening, the letter whose fragments were now being swirled down the stream into the open country.
He picked up a pen and slowly mended it, pulled out a sheet of Susannah's gilt-edged paper, and paused.
What had happened since he had left London that morning—his meeting with his cousin, the fierce disappointment and anger of Marius, the foolish, bitter reproaches of the Countess—had hardly touched his real feelings, and, personally, moved him not at all.
He had endured these scenes, disdainful of them; he knew that neither his mother nor Marius had ever attempted to avert the ruin that so overwhelmed them, and that they knew nothing of his real position.
To both he was a stranger in all things save blood, and now as he sat alone, his thoughts were where they had been on the ride from London, with the people and things of his own world, though through all was the stinging recollection of his brother's sneers and his mother's tears.
Presently he began to write, slowly but without hesitation.