Money, of course, was of no use, even if he still possessed it. Radowitz, in all matters connected with money, was hyper-sensitive and touchy. It was well known that he had private means; and it was certainly probable that he was now the richer man of the two. No—there was nothing to be done. He had maimed for ever 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 family 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 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.