The iron-gray robe fluttered an instant, and then vanished from the room.
When Alban Morley returned to the library, he saw Darrell at the farther corner of the room on his knees. Well might Guy Darrell thank Heaven for the mercies vouchsafed to him that night! Life preserved? Is that all? Might life yet be bettered and gladdened? Was there aught in the grim woman's words that might bequeath thoughts which reflection would ripen into influences over action? aught that might suggest the cases in which, not ignobly, Pity might subjugate Scorn? In the royal abode of that soul does Pride only fortify Honor? is it but the mild king, not the imperial despot? Would it blind, as its rival, the reason? Would it chain, as a rebel, the Heart? Would it mar the dominions that might be serene by the treasures it wastes—by the wars it provokes? Self-knowledge! self-knowledge! From Heaven, indeed, descends the precept—"Know thyself." That truth was told to us by the old heathen oracle. But what old heathen oracle has told us how to know?
CHAPTER IV.
Jasper Losely rode slowly on through the clear frosty night; not back to the country town which he had left on his hateful errand, nor into the broad road to London. With a strange desire to avoid the haunts of men, he selected—at each choice of way in the many paths branching right and left, between waste and woodland—the lane that seemed the narrowest and dimmest. It was not remorse that gnawed him, neither was it the mere mercenary disappointment, nor even the pang of baffled vengeance—it was the profound humiliation of diseased selflove—the conviction that, with all his brute power, he had been powerless in the very time and scene in which he had pictured to himself so complete a triumph. The very quiet with which he had escaped stung him. Capture itself would have been preferable, if capture had been preceded by brawl and strife—the exhibition of his hardihood and prowess. Gloomily bending over his horse's neck, he cursed himself as fool and coward. What would he have had?—a new crime on his soul?
