She was thirsting for some little display of love. Her loneliness had been more than she could bear, and her guilt had added to its terrors. Poor little soul! my love meant so much to her that in a few minutes she was smiling almost cheerfully. She had told them at Hammerton that her nerves were on the point of breaking down, and that she must have change; and she was now on her way to spend a few weeks with some friends in the North. I showed her how we might steal two days on her return and spend them together at a small seaside village that I knew of on the Yorkshire coast. It would be very near my marriage-day, and it was the sort of thing which always held vague possibilities of discovery, but still I am glad I risked it. Esther interested me enormously. I had never come across quite her type before. That, with her high moral stamina, she should so completely accept any scheme of deception which I chose to propose was extraordinary, but so it was. With me she seemed to have no will but mine. It was curious that she did not reproach me with the death of Lord Hammerton, but hers was not the nature to blame others for any guilt of which she had to admit a share. She must have concluded that my visiting Lord Hammerton’s nursery the morning after I had been in Walter Chard’s sick-room was responsible for the tragedy. I had expected a torrent of reproaches on this score, and was very pleased that she said nothing. The curious moral numbness from which she suffered when with me seemed to have put the memory of it out of her mind. Chapter XXV I now made the great mistake of my career. I had so far proceeded with extraordinary deliberation. I had from the first realised the danger of hurry. For a time I forgot caution, and that is why I, Israel Rank Gascoyne, Earl Gascoyne, Viscount Hammerton, am writing my memoirs in a condemned cell instead of living in almost feudal splendour in Hammerton Castle. As Lord Gascoyne had said, he and his wife were young, and there was every prospect of another heir. I had no time to lose. The way in which all the heirs of the House of Gascoyne had died off was beginning to attract attention. People had discovered that I was very close to the succession, and I was now a welcome guest at many houses which had hitherto been closed to me. Lady Branksome had evidently taken back her remark about the synagogue, for she was sweetness itself. Sibella appreciated my position fully, and began to regret her marriage with Lionel, saying that she had made a great mistake, and that she ought to have waited. She had long since told me that Lionel bored her terribly. “He isn’t even wicked or vicious,” she complained; “he is only weak.” I said that I was astonished that she should have taken so long to discover so obvious a fact.