Raymond had always been poor, he knew; but poverty in the antique splendor of decayed ancestral halls, with the necessaries of life provided as by a law of nature, and in the midst of a loyal and reverent peasantry, was a very different sort of poverty from what he was now embarking on. He would sometimes fix his eyes on Raymond when he was busying himself, with apparently great satisfaction, on some miserable trifle that Angélique wanted done in her room or in the kitchen, and wonder whether it was genuine or feigned, whether sorrow or philosophy had so deadened him to external conditions as to make him indifferent to the material meanness and miseries of his position. He never heard a word of regret, or any expression that could be construed into regret, escape him in their most familiar conversations. Once Raymond, in speaking of poverty, had confessed that he had never believed it had any power to make men unhappy--such poverty as his had been--until he felt the touch of its cruel finger on his Armengarde; then he realized the fact in its full bitterness. But he had foiled the tormenter by a sublime fraud of love, and saved his own heart from an anguish that would have been more intolerable than remorse. Sir Simon remembered the expression of Raymond’s face as he said this; the smile of gentle triumph that it wore, as if gratitude for the rescue and the sacrifice had alone survived. He concluded that it was so; that Raymond had forgiven poverty, since he had conquered her; and that now he could take her to live with him like a snake that had lost its sting, or some bright-spotted wild beast that he had wrestled with and tamed, and might henceforth sport with in safety. Sir Simon found it hard to reconcile this serene philosophical state of mind with his friend’s insurmountable reluctance to accept the least material service, while, on the other hand, he took with avidity any amount of affection and sympathy that was offered to him. It was because he felt that he could repay these in kind; whereas for the others he must remain an insolvent debtor. “Bourbonais, that is sheer nonsense and inconsistency. I wouldn’t give a button for your philosophy, if it can’t put you above such weakness. It’s absurd; you ought to struggle against it and overcome it.” This was the baronet’s pet formula; he was always ready with this advice to his friends. Raymond never contested the wisdom of the proposition, or Sir Simon’s right to enunciate it; but in this particular at least he did not adopt it.