“I hope this is all clear.  If it isn’t, we must thresh it out when we meet.  All I want you to grasp for the moment is that I love you as well as ever—­better than anything in the world—­and, because I want us to be the dearest friends always, I’m not going to marry you.

“Your mother and Uncle Ernest will of course take the conventional line, and my Aunt Jennie will do the same; but I hope you won’t bother about them.  Your welfare lies with me.  Don’t let them talk you into making a martyr of yourself, or any nonsense of that sort.

“Always, my dearest Sabina,
“Your faithful pal,
“Ray.”

Half an hour later Mrs. Dinnett took the letter in to Mr. Churchouse.

“Death,” she said.  “Death is in the air.  Sabina has gone to bed and I’m going for the doctor.  He’s broke off the engagement and wants her to be his housekeeper.  And this is a Christian country, or supposed to be.  Says it’s going to be quite all right and offers her money and a lifetime of sin!”

“Be calm, Mary, be calm.  You must have misread the letter.  Go and get the doctor by all means if Sabina has succumbed.  And leave the letter with me.  I will read it carefully.  That is if it is not private.”

“No, it ain’t private.  He slaps at us all.  We’re all conventional people, which means, I suppose, that we fear God and keep the laws.  But if my gentleman thinks—­”

“Go and get the doctor, Mary.  Two heads are better than one in a case of this sort.  I feel sure you and Sabina are making a mistake.”

“The world shall ring,” said Mrs. Dinnett, “and we’ll see if he can show his face among honest men again.  We that have abided by the law all our days—­now we’ll see what the law can do for us against this godless wretch.”

She went off to the village and Ernest cried after her to say nothing at present.  He knew, however, as he spoke that it was vain.

Then he put away his own work and read the letter very carefully twice through.

Profound sorrow came upon him and his innate optimism was over-clouded.  This seemed no longer the Raymond Ironsyde he had known from childhood.  It was not even the Raymond of a month ago.  He perceived how potential qualities of mind had awakened in the new conditions.  He was philosophically interested.  So deeply indeed did the psychological features of the change occupy his reflections, that for a time he overlooked their immediate and crushing significance in the affairs of another person.

Traces of the old Raymond remained in the promises of unbounded generosity and assurances of devotion; but Mr. Churchouse set no store upon them.  The word that rang truest was Raymond’s acute consciousness of power and appreciation thereof.  It had, as he said, opened his eyes.  Under any other conditions than those embracing Sabina and right and wrong, as Ernest accepted the meaning of right and wrong, he had won great hope from the letter.  It was clear that Raymond had become a man at a bound and might be expected to develop into a useful man; but that his first step from adolescence was to involve the destruction of a woman and child, soon submerged all lesser considerations in the thinker’s mind.  Righteousness was implicated, and to start his new career with a cold-blooded crime made Mr. Churchouse tremble for the entire future of the criminal.