My thoughts were far from cheerful as I sat there alone, the great house quiet within, and London hushed to midnight stillness without. Would good come out of all this evil upon which, shrinking and aghast, I had so lately looked? Deeper question yet—is it possible that evil ever can breed good? And my thought wandered homelessly through labyrinths of speculation regarding dualism, that apparently eternal inter-relation, inter-action of evil and of good, as manifested in nature, in history, in national and personal character, alike. Is there, verily, no good without alloy of evil, no evil lacking a strain of good? I thought of Fédore, as an example, at once befriending and devouring Hartover—whereby this mystery of dualism appeared painfully deepened and increased. But then—unable, I suppose, to support the sorrow of its own homelessness any longer—my thought turned to the sheltered corner of the garden at Westrea—where the high red-brick wall forms an angle with the mellow red-brick house front—to which, in the sweet May mornings, the neat box-edged borders gay with spring flowers, the brimming water, the avenue of oaks and the pasture gently sloping upward to the sky-line, so pleasantly set out before us, Nellie Braithwaite would bring her sewing and I the book from which to read aloud.—Ah! surely this—this had been wholly without alloy, purely and perfectly good! I pictured the scene in all its details, felt again the emotions engendered by it, and received comfort to my soul—for—not for very long, alas! The door opened. Hartover swung in. His face was still drawn and thin, but a spot of colour burned on either cheek and his eyes were extraordinarily bright. ‘That’s over,’ he said. ‘It has been damnable, utterly damnable. But it is done with. Now, please God, we start afresh—don’t move, Brownlow.’ This as I prepared to rise. ‘I must talk,’ he went on—‘talk to you now while the hot fit is still on me, so that you may register and, later, whip me up if I check or show any sign of running slack. Remind me of—of to-night. I have got what I bargained for—my clear stage and no favour. My stepmother signs a truce, under compulsion of—oh! yes, I know how ugly it sounds!—compulsion of fear, the fear of exposure and social ruin. If she interferes between me and my father, he shall be told certain facts. If, after his death, I find she has played tricks with the property, I shall go to law, which will be equivalent to publishing those same facts to all the world. If she keeps faith with me, I will stand by her and do everything in my power to shield her name from scandal and disgrace.—For, Brownlow, those who sold her, as a little more than a child, to a man nearly twice her age, and a weak-brained, dyspeptic valetudinarian at that, did a very cruel thing.—All the same, the Rusher has to vanish. As long as my father lives he shall never darken these doors, or those of Hover, again. That is absolute.’