Quite unaware that Destiny, that tireless spinner, was weaving sinister red threads of hate and love into the web of his life, Lambert continued to live quietly in his woodland retreat.  In a somewhat misanthropic frame of mind he had retired to this hermitage, after the failure of his love affair, since, lacking the society of Agnes, there was nothing left for him to desire.  From a garden of roses, the world became a sandy desert, and denied the sole gift of fortune, which would have made him completely happy, the disconsolate lover foreswore society for solitude.  As some seek religion, so Lambert hoped by seeking Nature’s breast to assuage the pains of his sore heart.  But although the great Mother could do so much, she could not do all, and the young man still felt restless and weary.  Hard work helped him more than a little, but he had his dark hours during those intervals when hand and brain were too weary to create pictures.

In one way he blamed Agnes, because she had married for money; in another way he did not blame her, because that same money had been necessary to support the falling fortunes of the noble family to which Lambert belonged.  An ordinary person would not have understood this, and would have seen in the mercenary marriage simply a greedy grasping after the loaves and fishes.  But Lambert, coming at the end of a long line of lordly ancestors, considered that both he and his cousin owed something to those of the past who had built up the family.  Thus his pride told him that Agnes had acted rightly in taking Pine as her husband, while his love cried aloud that the sacrifice was too hard upon their individual selves.  He was a Lambert, but he was also a human being, and the two emotions of love and pride strove mightily against one another.  Although quite three years had elapsed since the victim had been offered at the altar—­and a willing victim to the family fetish—­the struggle was still going on.  And because of its stress and strain, Lambert withdrew from society, so that he might see as little as possible of the woman he loved.  They had met, they had talked, they had looked, in a conventionally light-hearted way, but both were relieved when circumstances parted them.  The strain was too great.

Pine arranged the circumstances, for hearing here, there, and everywhere, that his wife had been practically engaged to her cousin before he became her husband, he looked with jealous eyes upon their chance meetings.  Neither to Agnes nor Lambert did he say a single word, since he had no reason to utter it, so scrupulously correct was their behavior, but his eyes were sufficiently eloquent to reveal his jealousy.  He took his wife for an American tour, and when he brought her back to London, Lambert, knowing only too truly the reason for that tour, had gone away in his turn to shoot big game in Africa.  An attack of malaria contracted in the Congo marshes had driven him back to England, and it was then that he had begged Garvington