His mind reverted to boyish days, when he and his only brother were as one; a joyous, inseparable pair. Recollections leaped up of the gentle dreamy lad, always ready to follow his stronger guidance, always winning and easily led. Never a shadow had come between them when—thirty-two years before this date—the younger brother married, only to lose his wife less than two years later. A year later still the widower went abroad, seemingly still broken-hearted, taking with him his tiny fragile Katherine, and a trained nurse to look after her; Nurse Molly of the farm. Then came long intervals of silence on the part of the younger brother, and constrained short letters, perplexing the elder. Once and once only the two met for a few days in Paris. Something of a drifting apart had come about between the two. Stirling, not understanding, would have been sorely troubled, but for the engrossing claims of his own love-affair, his intense devotion to the fair and sweet Lady Mary, at whose heart he was laying persistent siege. Wrapped up in this one aim, he hardly realised that his brother's absence from England had lasted between four and five years. Just when he hoped he had won his love, just as he was about to speak, a telegram summoned him to a distant and obscure German village, where his brother lay dying. He went without an hour's delay, only to arrive when all was over; only to have his eyes startlingly opened. Then he understood the constraint, the prolonged absence, the silence, the shadow, of the last few years. A hard fight followed, with much weighing of both sides; and in this fight Richard Stirling was beaten. At all hazards, he determined to ensure secrecy. He could not, would not, consent to that which might in all probability mean—the loss of Mary! Whatever might be involved in silence, Lady Mary should not know; her people should not know. He could not give her up. He could not live without her. Everything went down before this test. No doubt the temptation was immense. He felt that he had been ill-treated, in not learning sooner how things were. But temptation is never excuse. To secure the woman whom he adored, he stooped to a course of elaborate and long-continued deceit,—a course also of definite and deliberate wrong to others. He had his way, and he paid his price. A price, not only in money. He had been paying the price ever since, through twenty-five long years. For the weight of this secret wrong had been always upon him. Not always to the fore. During the life of his wife he had kept it mainly out of sight; out of his own sight. He had borne himself proudly, courageously. He had looked upon it as a thing to which he was driven by circumstances beyond his own control. He had felt a kind of calm certainty that the thing had to be, that there was no escape out of the tangle.