callow boastfulness. "He has the subtlety of Satan, yet he does not
delude me. It was at me he struck through Killigrew. Because he
desires you, Rosamund, he could not--as he bluntly told me--deal with
me however I provoked him, not even though I went the length of
striking him. He might have killed me for't; but he knew that to do so
would place a barrier 'twixt him and you. Oh! he is calculating as all
the fiends of Hell. So, to wipe out the dishonour which I did him, he
shifts the blame of it upon Killigrew and goes out to kill him, which
he further thinks may act as a warning to me. But if Killigrew
dies...." And thus he rambled on, filling her gentle heart with anguish
to see this feud increasing between the two men she loved best in all
the world. If the outcome of it should be that either were to kill the
other, she knew that she could never again look upon the survivor.

She took heart at last in the memory of Sir Oliver's sworn promise that
her brother's life should be inviolate to him, betide what might. She
trusted him; she depended upon his word and that rare strength of his
which rendered possible to him a course that no weaker man would dare
pursue. And in this reflection her pride in him increased, and she
thanked God for a lover who in all things was a giant among men.

But Sir John Killigrew did not die. He hovered between this world and
a better one for some seven days, at the end of which he began to
recover. By October he was abroad again, gaunt and pale, reduced to
half the bulk that had been his before, a mere shadow of a man.

One of his first visits was to Godolphin Court. He went to remonstrate
with Rosamund upon her betrothal, and he did so at the request of her
brother. But his remonstrances were strangely lacking in the force
that she had looked for.