“Oh! very well. Then I sha’n’t see her till Tuesday; but it doesn’t matter. Send down to the keeper and tell him that I want to speak to him, will you? I think that I will change my clothes and shoot some rabbits after lunch. Stop, order the dog-cart to be ready to drive me to Monk’s Lodge in time to dress for dinner.” To analyse Henry’s feelings during the remainder of that day would be difficult, if not impossible; but those of shame and bitter anger were uppermost in his mind shame that he had laid himself open to such words as Rock used to him, and anger that his vanity and blind faith in a woman’s soft speeches and feigned love should have led him into so ignominious a position. Mingled with these emotions were his natural pangs of jealousy and disappointed affection, though pride would not suffer him to give way to them. Again and again he reviewed every detail of the strange and, to his sense, appalling story; and at times, overpowering as was the evidence, his mind refused to accept its obvious moral namely, that he had been tricked and made a tool of yes, used as a foil to bring this man to the point of marriage. How was it possible to reconcile Joan’s conduct in the past and that wild letter of hers with her subsequent letters and action? Thus only: that as regards the first she had been playing on his feelings and inexperience of the arts of women; and that, as in sleep men who are no poets can sometimes compose verse which is full of beauty, so in her delirium Joan had been able to set on paper words and thoughts that were foreign to her nature and above its level. Or perhaps that letter was a forgery written by Mrs. Bird, who was “so romantic.” The circumstances under which it reached him were peculiar, and Joan herself expressly repudiated all knowledge of it. Notwithstanding his doubts, perplexities and suffering, as might have been expected, the matter in the end resolved itself into two very simple issues: first, that, whatever may have been her exact reasons, Joan Haste had broken with him once and for all by marrying another man; and second, that, as a corollary to her act, many dangers and difficulties which beset him had disappeared, and he was free, if he wished it, to marry another woman.