‘My dearest,’ he said hastily, ‘I am saying only how they represent such things to themselves. They don’t take time to think--they rush on to the wildest conclusions. The thing is done before they see or realise what it is. And then, as I tell you, they think themselves the prey, and those, those others the hunters--and take their revenge--when they can.’ But it was hard to go on with that argument with her eyes upon him. When she closed them he could speak. When they opened again in the midst of his plea, those eyes so clear with fever, so liquid, as if every film had been swept from them, and only an all-seeing, unquenchable vision, yet tender as the heavens, left behind--he stopped and faltered in his tale: and then he took refuge in that last resort of human feeling--the thing that had to be done, the expedients by which a wrong can be made to appear as if it were right, and trouble and misery smoothed away, so that the world should believe that all was well. The conclusion, which was not arrived at for some time, was that which old Lord Lindores took credit to himself for having suggested before, ‘and which might have put a stop to all this,’ he said with a wave of his hand. It was Africa and big game for two or three years, during which ‘the young woman’--the family spoke of her as if she had no name--should be put under careful training. It had been ascertained, still by Beaufort, who conducted himself to everybody’s admiration, that ‘the young woman’ had no bad antecedents, and that so much hope as there could be in such a miserable business might be theirs. Tom was so thoroughly broken down by the discovery which humbled his clownish pride to the dust, and made him feel almost as poor a creature as he was, that he gave in with little resistance to the dictates of the family council. No unhappy university man, however, was beguiled into accompanying this unlikely pupil. He was given into the hands of a mighty sportsman, who treated him like a powder boy, and brought Tom, the Lord of the Towers, the wealthiest commoner in the North, the experienced man of Oxford, into complete and abject subjection--which was the best thing that could have happened to him.