Now he walked beside her, and she explained how only a word was wanting between Will and Clement which neither would speak.  Hicks had forgiven Will, but he refused to visit Newtake until he received an apology from the master of it; and Blanchard bore no ill-will to Clement, but declined to apologise for the past.  These facts Martin listened to, while the blood beat like a tide within his temples, and a mist dimmed his eyes as the girl laid her brown hand upon his arm now and again, to accentuate a point.  At such moments the truth tightened upon his soul and much distressed him.

The antiquary had abandoned any attempt to forget Chris, or cease from worshipping her with all his heart and soul; but the emotion now muzzled and chained out of sight he held of nobler composition than that earlier love which yearned for possession.  Those dreary months that dragged between the present and his first disappointment had served as foundations for new developments of character in the man.  He existed through a period of unutterable despair and loneliness; then the fruits of bygone battles fought and won came to his aid, and long-past years of self-denial and self-control fortified his spirit.  The reasonableness of Martin Grimbal lifted him slowly but steadily from the ashes of disappointment; even his natural humility helped him, and he told himself he had no more than his desert.  Presently, with efforts the very vigour of which served as tonic to character, he began to wrestle at the granite again and resume his archaeologic studies.  Speaking in general terms, his mind was notably sweetened and widened by his experience; and, resulting from his own failure to reach happiness, there awoke in him a charity and sympathy for others, a fellow-feeling with humanity, remarkable in one whose enthusiasm for human nature was not large, whose ruling passion, until the circumstance of love tinctured it, had led him by ways which the bulk of men had pronounced arid and unsatisfying.  Now this larger insight was making a finer character of him and planting, even at the core of his professional pursuits, something deeper than is generally to be found there.  His experience, in fact, was telling upon his work, and he began slowly to combine with the labour of the yard-measure and the pencil, the spade and the camera, just thoughts on the subject of those human generations who ruled the Moor aforetime, who lived and loved and laboured there full many a day before Saxon keel first grated on British shingle.

To Chris did Martin listen attentively.  Until the present time he had taken Will’s advice and made no offer of work to Clement; but now he determined to do so, although he knew this action must mean speedy marriage for Chris. Love, that often enough can shake a lifetime of morality, that can set ethics and right conduct and duty playing a devil’s dance in the victim’s soul, that can change the practised customs of a man’s life and send cherished opinions,