The thought of it embittered him; the part she had played seemed to his retrospective mind almost a wanton's part--for all that in name she was his wife.

And yet, underlying a certain irrepressible nausea, came the reflection that, after all, her purpose had been to save his life.

It would have been a sweet thought, sweet enough to have overlaid that other bitterness, had he not insisted upon setting it down entirely to her gratitude and her sense of justice.

She intended to repay the debt in which she had stood to him since, at the risk of his own life and fortune, he had rescued her brother from the clutches of the Lord-Lieutenant at Taunton.
He sighed heavily as he thought of the results that had attended his compulsory wedding of her.

In the intensity of his passion, in the blindness of his vanity, which made him confident--gloriously confident--that did he make himself her husband, she herself would make of him her lover before long, he had committed an unworthiness of which it seemed he might never cleanse himself in life.