The rebel spirit is quickly astir when a man’s in love, and so it was with Jeffray after his sparring with Mr. Lot. That gentleman’s red-visaged and swaggering hauteur had irritated Richard not a little, and he was in no temper to be driven at the sword’s-point to the altar. Already he was waxing world-wise enough to recognize the truth that Mr. Lot was ready to presume upon his supposed timidity. The suspicion awoke a sense of resistance in Jeffray, an instinctive feeling of antagonism that was only human. Left to his own sensitive and generous impulses, he would probably have found no great difficulty in bringing himself before Miss Jilian’s feet. Her brother’s threatening interference checked the free flow of pity, and made Richard Jeffray recoil and consider the future for himself. He was still in a fever about Bess, and unable to bear with any calmness the thought of her sacrifice to the lewd cunning of her cousin. Jeffray felt that his word had been pledged to the girl, pledged for her honor’s sake, and that he had failed through circumstance to keep his pledge. The bond was as real to him as his betrothal to Miss Hardacre, and far more real in the matter of romance. On the one hand, he recognized a perfunctory and half-pitying sense of duty; on the other, all the passionate chivalry that had lain latent till now within his heart. Why should he not desire to befriend the girl in her trouble? Was there any dishonor in the desire, and need the world know how much tenderness must needs be locked and hidden in his heart? He would not make love to her or court her love in turn. And yet was it not possible that he might succor her in her distress, comfort her, lighten her lot a little? He might even protect her from Dan’s brutality, should that savage give him a reasonable and an honorable excuse. Bess was married. So far there was an impenetrable barrier between them. He could not break the gate of fate, but he might touch her hands between the bars. Nothing was more natural, therefore, to such philosophy than that Jeffray should signalize his return to the saddle by a pilgrimage through Pevensel in quest of Bess. The brisk delight of a canter over the purpling moors was itself a joy to a man who had been three weeks abed. How the larks sang, and how the broom flashed and glittered in the wind! The cloud galleons bellied out their white sails over the crests of the downs. The diverse greens, checkering the landscape, seemed dusted with gold-dust by the daughters of the dawn. The day brought back to him the warm, romantic splendor of the south, the memory of Sicilian skies and the isles of Greece, a-dream in the blue Ægean.