No—there was nothing to be done. He had maimed forever the vital, energising impulse in another human being, and it could never be repaired. “His poor music!—_murdered_”—the words from Constance Bledlow’s horror-stricken letter were always in his mind. And the day after the inquest on Sir Arthur, he had had some conversation on the medical points of his father’s case, and on the light thrown on them by Radowitz’s evidence, with the doctor who was then attending Lady Laura, and had, it appeared, been several times called in by Sorell during the preceding weeks to see Radowitz and report on the progress of the hand. “A bad business!” said the young man, who had intelligence and was fresh from hospital—“and awful hard luck!—he might have hurt his hand in a score of ways and still have recovered the use of it, but with this particular injury”—he shook his head—“nothing to be done! And the worst of it is that a trouble like this, which cuts across a man’s career, goes so deep. The thing I should be most afraid of is his general health. You can see that he’s delicate—narrow-chested—a bundle of nerves. It might be phthisis—it might be”—he shrugged his shoulders—“well, depression, bad neurasthenia. And the poor lad seems to have no family—no mother or sisters—to look after him. But he’ll want a lot of care, if he’s to pull round again. An Oxford row, wasn’t it? Abominable!” But here the sudden incursion of Lady Laura’s maid to ask a question for her mistress had diverted the doctor’s thoughts and spared Falloden reply. A little later, he was riding slowly up the side of the moor towards Scarfedale, looking down on a landscape which since his childhood had been so intimate and familiar a part of himself that the thought of being wrenched away from it, immediately and for good, seemed merely absurd. September was nearly gone; and the trees had long passed out of their August monotony, and were already prophetic of the October blaze. The level afternoon light was searching out the different planes of distance, giving to each hedgerow, elm or oak, a separate force and kingship: and the golden or bronze shades, which were day by day stealing through the woods, made gorgeous marriage with the evening purple. The castle, as he gazed back upon it, had sunk into the shadows, a dim magnificent ghost, seen through mist, like the Rhine maidens through the blue water.