He was as ingenious and unscrupulous a criminal as there was in the whole length and breadth of the kingdom.
I saw in what deadly peril was my sweet well-beloved. She was in fear of him. Perhaps he, on his part, held some secret of hers. From her attitude I suspected this. If so, then any word of mine to the police would bring to her only ruin and disgrace!
Chapter Twenty Three.
Children of Circumstance.
Was any man more pitiful, more foolish, more pathetically lonely, more grotesquely fooled by Fate than I?
Was all the world a lie?
Upon the face of my love was a trouble that for once clouded its wondrous beauty. I tried to touch her hair, but she avoided me by a gesture that made me shrink a little.
The years, the tranquil sorrow of my late life dropped from me; I became again only the fierce, fearless, thoughtless lover; the man who had walked with her and adored her beside that summer sea so long ago.