Cumnock offered to cheer him with a song of Captain Chanter's famous collection, if he liked; but Morsfield gesticulated abhorrence, and set out at a trot.

Song in defeat was a hiss of derision to him.
He had failed.

Having failed, he for the first time perceived the wildness of a plot that had previously appeared to him as one of the Yorkshire Morsfields' moves to win an object.

Traditionally they stopped at nothing.

There would have been a sunburst of notoriety in the capture and carrying off of the beautiful Countess of Ormont.
She had eluded him during the downward journey to Steignton.