He stood with the faint illumination from the open windows of Government House upon his fine head and his neat fair beard.

It intensified the gleam in his earnest blue eyes, while it softened his angularities and bush roughness, and as she looked up at him, she could not help feeling what a splendid fellow he was! What a MAN! So much finer than that other man to whom she had nearly given herself! Ah, she had had an escape! Under all his show of romantic adventure, his ardent protestations, his magnetic charm, that other man had been utterly sophisticated, worldly, self-interested.

He had shown this in his money-grabbing, in his disloyalty both to the woman he had professed to love, and to the woman he had married for her fortune.

Thinking of him in this way, Lady Bridget felt that in time she might come to care a great deal more for Colin McKeith.
He caught up her last words.
'Yes, I know that you WANT to love me Biddy, and I hope with all my heart and soul that you will--or else--' he broke off, his face darkening.
'Or else--what ?' 'I don't know.

It would be hell.