In any case none of those ladies of the world--or other world--had any reasons to reproach him, and he was free and happy.

And if he wished to put down a large stake on the card of marriage he was answerable to no one.
During the last eight hundred years, ever since Amaury Guiscard of that house of Hauteville whose daring deeds gave sovereigns to half Europe, had come over with his Duke William, and had been rewarded by the gift of the Wrayth lands--seized from the Saxons--his descendants had periodically done madly adventurous things.

Perhaps the quality was coming out in him! Then he thought of his lady, personally, and not of the extraordinariness of his action.

She was exasperatingly attractive.

How delicious it would be when he had persuaded her to talk to him, taught her to love him, because she certainly must love him--some day! It was rather cold-blooded of her to be willing to marry him, a stranger; but he was not going to permit himself to dwell upon that.