For this was to be a night of abstinence, so the young man had decided, from the dear sight of his fairy-lady and the delight of her miraculously recovered speech. He had a duty to perform to the dead man, lying solitary upstairs--though hardly more solitary now, than during the long years past in which he had repudiated all solace of human affection. To Laurence himself life had become almost terribly well worth living since he had set foot in Stoke Rivers little more than a week ago; and it was to this man, of cold and narrow nature, that, after all, he owed this notable enlargement of interests and opportunity--not to mention those material advantages of houses, lands, and costly furnishings which had come to him. Gratitude was very much in place; and it seemed to him that a silent vigil in that stately bed-chamber would be only fitting, both as an act of piety, and as testimony to the gratitude now no longer permitted expression either in spoken word or kindly act. Nor could Laurence help hoping that during those solemn hours he might arrive at a clear determination regarding the future--ceasing merely to drift passive and acquiescent to the push of circumstance, as a rudderless boat to the push of the tide. He would direct his own course, be master of his own action, prepared to take--for good or ill--all the consequences that action might involve. For, all the while--and it was worse than useless to shirk remembrance of that--all the while, across the Atlantic, under the bright American skies, bright as they, immediate and modern as the civilisation on which they look down, was the vivacious, young, society beauty, whom he had believed he loved, whom he very certainly had married, and to whom--in the opinion of both her world and his own--his honour and his whole future stood pledged. The question of Virginia--for the whole situation resolved itself fundamentally into that--the question of Virginia must be reckoned with, and the results of such reckoning accepted once and for all.