baronet would play his cards to win her honorably. I doubted not he'd
make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a
widow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better
compassing of his end.

But from this horn of the dilemma I slipped to fall upon the other. If
my living on as Margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was an
offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. What
would he think of me? How could I go about to make it plain that I had
robbed him for his own honor's sake?--that it was not I but fate that
was to blame?

These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where no
bottom is. I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must go
straightway to Jennifer and tell him all. Beyond that point the darkness
was Egyptian, and I could only hope that tricky fate would turn again
and blot me out, and make it plain to Richard, and to my dear lady, that
love, and not base treachery, had set me on to do as I had done.

In some such dismal grindings of the mill of thought the hours of
waiting were outworn at length; and when the sun was dipping to the
mountains in the west I rose and washed me in the brook, and afterward
constrained myself to eat what Tomas had prepared for me.

The sunset glow was fading in the upper air, and underneath the canopy
of leaves the wood was darkening on to twilight, when I made ready to be
gone. Because I thought I might have need of it before the night was
done, I buckled on the heirloom sword; and telling Tomas and the other
blacks for their own safety to keep an alarm guard waking through the
night, I sallied forth upon my errand.