To try to sleep did not enter his head. He sat for a long time on the side of the bed, seeking to evolve something like order from the chaos of his wits, but he could not think. Had he tried to write, to discuss the thing in a letter, the simple familiar operation of the pen might have led him out of the _cul de sac_. As it was, whichever turn his mind sought to take, there rose an impassable barrier of shame, or rage or self-recrimination. In whatever light he tried to view the situation, it was all pain. He had been curtly, cruelly thrown off by his brother--the man to whom he owed everything--and he had had to listen to the most cutting, insulting language from this brother before they parted. Then, as he clenched his fists and fumed with impotent anger at the recollection of this language, there would come to divert this wrath, and turn it back upon himself, the facts that he had interposed his own boyish vanity and conceit to balk this brother’s purposes, and had been caught trembling on the very brink of making love to this brother’s wife. Did he not richly merit Albert’s scorn? He could remember--should he ever forget?--the exact words of Albert’s contemptuous characterization: “A conceited, presumptuous, offensive fool.” Did he not deserve them all? He owed this brother everything: the honest boy insisted upon saying this to himself over and over again, as the basis of all argument on the subject; the opportunity came for him to repay something of this debt. How had he improved it? By setting himself up to oppose this brother in the chief object of his life, and, as if this were not enough, by yielding weakly to the temptation to rob him of his domestic honor as well! “I must be a villain as well as a fool, must I!” the youngster growled between his set teeth, as he threw himself from the bed, and began the gloomy pacing up and down again. He had not lighted his lamp. The soft half-darkness of the starlight, sufficing barely to render objects visible in the room, suited his mood. He heard the sound of wheels now on the gravel below. Looking out, he could see that the grays were being driven out; as they turned the corner of the house, the full moonlight fell upon them and the carriage, and Seth saw distinctly that it was his brother who was driving, and that he was wrapped as for an all-night ride. “He won’t even stay under the same roof with me!” he said half-aloud, with a fresh bitterness of self-accusation--and then the torment of reproaching voices began in his breast again. As he turned from the window he heard a low rapping at his door; a minute later, he heard Isabel’s voice, almost a whisper: “Seth! Don’t open the door, but tell me, who was it that went out with the carriage just now? I heard it, but from my window I could see nothing. Was it _he?_”