When Lord Fordyce found himself alone, it felt as if life itself must
leave him, the agony of pain was so great, the fiendish irony of
circumstances. It almost seemed that each time he had intended to do a
good thing, he had been punished. He had left Arranstoun for the best
motive, and so had not seen Sabine and thus saved himself from future
pain; he had taken Michael to Heronac out of kindly friendship, and this
had robbed him of his happiness. But, awful as the discovery was now, it
was not half so terrible as it would have been if the truth had only
come to him later, when Sabine had become his wife. He must be thankful
for that. Things had always been inevitable; it was plain to be
understood that she had loved Michael all along, and nothing he
personally could have done w
