Having seen the chief representative of Pergament and Pergament, placed his interests in the hands of that respectable house, and chosen the advocates who were to defend his cause, should this pretended cousin of his dare to assert her rights in a court of law, Churchill Penwyn felt himself free to go back to Cornwall by the mid-day train. He had an uneasy feeling in being away from home at this juncture—a vague sense of impending peril on all sides—a passionate desire to be near his wife and child. He had ample time for thought during that long journey westward; time to contemplate his position in all its bearings, to wonder whether his wisdom might not, after all, be folly, beside Madge’s clear-sighted sense of right. ‘She spoke the bitter truth,’ he thought. ‘Wealth and estate have not brought me happiness. They have gratified my self-esteem, satisfied my ambition, but they have not given me restful nights or peaceful dreams. Would it be better for me to please Madge, throw up the sponge, and go to the other end of the world, to begin life afresh, remote from all old associations, out of reach of the memory of the past?’ ‘No!’ he told himself, after a pause. ‘There is no new life for me. I am too old for beginning again.’ He thought of his triumphs of last session, those bursts of fervid eloquence which had startled the House into the admission that a new orator had arisen, as when the younger Pitt first demonstrated to the doubtful senate that he was a worthy son of the great Commoner. He was just at the beginning of a brilliant Parliamentary career, and with him ambition was an all-powerful passion. To let these things go, even for Madge’s sake, would be too great a sacrifice. And his boy, was he to bequeath nothing to that beloved son? Neither fortune nor name? ‘I could more easily surrender Penwyn than my chances of personal distinction,’ he said to himself. It was nine o’clock in the evening when he arrived at Seacomb. He had telegraphed for his groom to meet him with the dog-cart; and, as the train steamed slowly into the station, he saw the lamps of that well-appointed vehicle shining across the low rail which divided the platform from the road. A dark night for a drive by that wild moorland way. ‘Shall I drive, sir?’ asked the groom. ‘No,’ Churchill answered shortly; and the next minute they were flying through the darkness. The light vehicle swayed from side to side on the stony road.