Elton's visit roused no curiosity in his complacent breast, for the favorite seldom announced his coming, and it was quite in order that he should run down for congratulations, and delight his affectionate if disapproving relative with personal details of the great fight. He had come with the intention of being the one to break the news of his cousin's death to his grandfather, should it be necessary; but he permitted himself to hope that Zeal would rise above his type. He had driven him to the station himself, dispensing with the groom as well, and pleaded with him to wait at least a month; to consider the matter more coolly and carefully than had hitherto been possible; begged him to return to Capheaton; offered to travel with him if he preferred to leave England. Whatever might threaten in the future there could be no immediate danger of arrest, for if the shot had carried beyond the private rooms of the Club there would have been evidence of the fact at once, and if the undertakers had suspected the truth and delayed giving information, their purpose was blackmail and could be dealt with. And while he argued and pleaded he wondered, as he had during the hours he watched beside his cousin sleeping, if, in spite of certain principles which he had believed to be immutable, he could have found any other solution himself. Honor has many arbitrary inflections, and Zeal's act, being wholly abominable, there must seem, in his code, to be no place for him among men. To walk among them unscathed, punished only by a conscience that time would inevitably dull, and the loss of a small fortune that his promised wife would more than replace, while some passionate creature without powerful friends or money for blackmail went to the noose, was an outrage abroad in the secret regions of the spirit even if it made no assault upon public standards. He deserved extinction, one way or another, and it would be almost as great an outrage were he to cover his family with his own disgrace. Certain men might, after such a lesson, live on to devote their lives to repentance and beneficent works, but not Zeal; and Gwynne had no great respect for a character made over after some terrifying explosion among its baser parts. And the question would always remain if the highest honor would not have commanded confession.