He made a sharp gesture that checked her. "My dear Maud," he said, "there are a good many things I can't do, and one of them is this. I can't hold any woman against her will--no, not if she were my wife ten times over. I wouldn't have let her go to Spentoli. But Bunny is a different matter. I have Jake's word for it that he will make her a better husband than I shall. If Bunny wants to know all about her past--her parentage--he can come to me and I can satisfy him. Tell him that! But if he really loves her--he won't care a damn--any more than I do." "Ah!" Maud said. She stood a moment, looking at him, and in her eyes was that mother-look of a love that understands. She held out her hand to him. "Thank you for telling me, Charlie," she said. "Good-bye!" He held her hand. "What have I told you?" he asked abruptly. She shook her head. "Never mind now! You have just made me understand, that's all. I will give your message to Bunny--to them both. Good-bye!" He stooped in his free, gallant way to kiss her hand. "After all," he said, "I return to my old allegiance. It was you, _chère reine_, who taught me how to love." She gently freed her hand and turned to go. "No," she said. "I think it was God who taught you that." For the second time Charles Rex failed to utter the scoffing laugh she half-expected. The odd eyes looked after her with a kind of melancholy irony. "To what purpose?" he said. CHAPTER XI THE GIFT OF THE GODS A chill wind blew across the ramparts bringing with it the scent and the sound of the sea. There was no moon in the sky tonight, only the clouds flying over the stars, obscuring and revealing them alternately, making their light weirdly vague and fitful. Across the park an owl called persistently, its eerie hoot curiously like the cry of a human voice through the rustling night. The trees were murmuring together down by the lake as though some mysterious news were passing to and fro among them. And once more, alone on his castle walls, Saltash paced restlessly up and down. It was his last night at Burchester, so he told himself, for many a year to come. The fever for change was upon him. He had played his last card and lost. It was characteristic of the man to turn his back upon his losses and be gone. His soul had begun to yearn for the wide spaces, and it was in answer to the yearning that he had come up to this eagle's eyrie a second time. He could not be still, and the feeling of walls around him was somehow unbearable. But he expected no vision tonight. He walked in darkness.