Bruce's was a hard, money-loving nature, unromantic to a degree; but I believe he would gladly have waked to find himself a houseless, landless beggar, if he could thus have regained what Charley, with his soft voice, and eyes, and manner, had stolen from him long ago. Am I right in saying "stolen?" Perhaps he never had it; at all events, he thought he had, which comes to nearly the same thing. It is true that, unraveling the cord of a man's existence, you will generally find the blackest hank in it twined by a woman's hand, but it is not less common to trace the golden thread to the same spindle. Great warrior, profound statesman, stanch champion of liberty as he was, without Edith of the Swan's-neck, Harold would scarcely have risen into a hero of romance. We do not quite despise Charles VII. when we think how faithfully, in loneliness and ruin, the Lady of Beauty loved her apathetic, senseless, discrowned king. Others never found it out, but there must have been something precious hid in a dark corner of his wayward heart near which Agnes nestled so long. We look leniently on Otho--parasite and profligate--when we see him lingering on his last march, on the very verge of the death-struggle, in the teeth of Galba's legions, to decorate Popaea's grave. More in pity than in scorn, be sure, did Tacitus, the historic epigrammatist, write "_Ne tum quidem veterum immemor amorum_." Was it in remorseful consciousness of having inflicted a deep, irreparable wrong, that Isabel rode so constantly by Bruce's side, striving, by all means of timid propitiation, to chase the cloud lowering on his sullen face as we returned slowly home? CHAPTER XV. _"To de prokluein, Epei genoit' an elusis, prochaireto; Ison de to prostenein, Toron gar exei sunorthron augais."_ My stay at Kerton Manor was drawing to a close. I had lingered there too long already, and letters from neglected relatives and friends came, reproachful, with every post. The day before I went, Guy called me into his study. "Frank," he said, "I am in a great strait of perplexity; my uncle has been attacking me this morning about Isabel and Charley. Bruce puts him up to it, of course." "I thought it would come; but why on earth did not Bruce speak to you, if not to Forrester, himself? Perhaps it was from delicacy, though. Let us hope so." "How philanthropic we are!" Guy retorted. "I don't believe any other man would have spoken of delicacy and that rough-hewn log of Scotch-fir in the same breath. My dear boy, the thing is as simple as possible--the man is a coward. He is as careful of that precious person of his as if it were worth preserving, so he shoots his arrows from behind Uncle Henry's Telamonian shield. Nothing is so acute and right-judging as the instinct of fear. He knows that if he had a fancy for a quarrel, either Charley or I would be too happy to indulge him." "He can't be such a dastard," I said.