"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.