“Tell me something,” said Lord Ascot.  “Have you any love left for her yet?”

“Not one spark,” said Charles.  “If I ever am a man again, I shall ask Mary Corby to marry me.  I ought to have done so sooner, perhaps.  But I love your wife, Welter, in a way; and I should grieve at her death, for I loved her once.”

“The truth is very horrible.  We went out hunting together, and I was getting the gate open for her, when her devil of a horse rushed it, and down they came on it together.  And she broke her back, and the doctor says she may live till seventy, but that she will never move from where she lies—­and just as I was getting to love her so dearly—­”

That same afternoon Charles asked William to get Mary to come and see him, and William straightway departed, and found Mary.  And later in the day Miss Mary Corby announced that she and Charles were engaged to be married.

William was still master of Ravenshoe, but he was convinced that the first marriage of his grandfather would be proved, and Charles reinstated.

“Remember, Charles, I am not spending the revenues of Ravenshoe,” he said.  “They are yours.  I know it.  I am spending about L400 a year.  When our grandfather’s marriage is proved, you will provide for me and my wife, I know that.  Be quiet.”

William had long been engaged, from the time he had been Charles’s servant, to a fisherman’s daughter, Jane Evans, and the change in his fortunes made no difference in the matter.  She was only a fisherman’s daughter, but she was wonderfully beautiful, and gentle, and good.

The weddings took place at St. Peter’s, Eaton Square.  Mary and Charles were not a handsome couple.  The enthusiasm of the population was reserved for William and Jane Evans, who certainly were.

Father Mackworth, dying after a stroke of paralysis, told us the date and place of Peter Ravenshoe’s first marriage—­Finchampstead, Berks, 1778.  He had known the truth, but had been anxious to keep Ravenshoe in Catholic hands.

“You used to irritate and insult me, sir,” he said, turning to Charles, “and I was not so near death then as now.  If you can forgive me, in God’s name, say so!”

Charles went over to him, and put his arm round him.

“Forgive you!” he said.  “Dear Mackworth, can you forgive me?”

The register was found, and the lawyers were soon busy.  One document may be noted, a rent charge on Ravenshoe of two thousand a year in favour of William Ravenshoe.

* * * * *

Well, Charles and William are both happily married now, and I saw Charles last summer playing with his eldest boy.  But there was a cloud on his face, for the memory of those few terrible months has cast its shadow upon him, and the shadow will lie, I fancy, upon that forehead until the forehead is smoothed in the sleep of death.