Stephen Gore felt a sudden pity for his son that morning. Something drew him toward that silent, brown-faced man, so strong and yet so simple—so wise, and yet so ready to believe. Yet what was the use of soliloquizing over broken pitchers and squandered wine? He had entered an alley in which there was no turning, and those who hindered him must be brushed aside. To hesitate would only plunge all those concerned into bitterer complexities, and perhaps into deeper guilt. And yet he could not forget that look in his son’s eyes, for the man trusted him, and the man was his own son. “Crooked corners are best left crooked,” he said to himself, at last, as he reached out a hand toward the bell-rope. “After all, he need not make an Arabella Stewart of the girl; there are handsomer and better-tempered women by the score.—Come along, Rogers; I am late as it is. Put my plum-colored suit out. And have you stropped those razors properly? They were beginning to bite like files.” Rogers bustled forward with hot water, scented napkins, and a phial of perfumes. “Yes, sir, they are as sharp as your own wit, sir.” “Give me the glass, Rogers. I feel yellow this morning. Do I look it?” “A little tired, sir, perhaps. Nothing more.” XXIII They will tell you in those parts how Waller, the parliamentarian, battered with his cannon the Purcells’ house of Thorn, leaving it half ruinous, as a warning to all royalists who felt tempted to trust in the breadth of their moats or the stoutness of their walls. Be the woodland legend what it may, the Purcells were poor after the long war, and Thorn had been for thirty years a haunt of owls and jackdaws—a strange, dim place set in the midst of stagnant water, far from a high-road, and hidden by wastes and woods. From broken gable ends and tottering battlements a red-brick tower and a few twisted chimneys rose against the blue. Even in those short years ivy had climbed up over the walls, pouring over the stone sills of the windows, and growing knotty and stout of stem even up to the leaden water-spouts of the tower. When the wind blew from the southwest the whole house seemed to shake and glimmer with the movements of those myriad leaves. And through the windows of roofless rooms you could see the sky redden or grow gold at dawn or sunset.