So shaken was he, however, that though he tried once and yet again, he found it impossible to settle himself down to work till he had taken a couple of glasses of sherry from the decanter in the cupboard.  Even as he did so he wondered if the shadow of the sword disturbed him so much, how he would be affected if it ever was his lot to face the glimmer of its naked blade.

No further letter came to Edward Cossey from the Castle, but, impatient as he was to do so, another fortnight elapsed before he was able to see Ida and her father.  At last one fine December morning for the first time since his accident he was allowed to take carriage exercise, and his first drive was to Honham Castle.

When the Squire, who was sitting in the vestibule writing letters, saw a poor pallid man, rolled up in fur, with a white face scarred with shot marks and black rings round his large dark eyes, being helped from a closed carriage, he did not know who it was, and called to Ida, who was passing along the passage, to tell him.

Of course she recognised her admirer instantly, and wished to leave the room, but her father prevented her.

“You got into this mess,” he said, forgetting how and for whom she got into it, “and now you must get out of it in your own way.”

When Edward, having been assisted into the room, saw Ida standing there, all the blood in his wasted body seemed to rush into his pallid face.

“How do you do, Mr. Cossey?” she said.  “I am glad to see you out, and hope that you are better.”

“I beg your pardon, I cannot hear you,” he said, turning round; “I am stone deaf in my right ear.”

A pang of pity shot through her heart.  Edward Cossey, feeble, dejected, and limping from the jaws of Death, was a very different being to Edward Cossey in the full glow of his youth, health, and strength.  Indeed, so much did his condition appeal to her sympathies that for the first time since her mental attitude towards him had been one of entire indifference, she looked on him without repugnance.

Meanwhile her father had shaken him by the hand, and led him to an armchair before the fire.

Then after a few questions and answers as to his accident and merciful recovery there came a pause.

At length he broke it.  “I have come to see you both,” he said with a faint nervous smile, “about the letters you wrote me.  If my condition had allowed I should have come before, but it would not.”

“Yes,” said the Squire attentively, while Ida folded her hands in her lap and sat still with her eyes fixed upon the fire.

“It seems,” he went on, “that the old proverb has applied to my case as to so many others—­being absent I have suffered.  I understand from these letters that my engagement to you, Miss de la Molle, is broken off.”

She made a motion of assent.

“And that it is broken off on the ground that having been forced by a combination of circumstances which I cannot enter into to transfer the mortgages to Mr. Quest, consequently I broke my bargain with you?”