There was a secret hiding-place behind a drawer there, in which he kept papers relating to his transactions with Andrew Starkie, and he put it among them.

"I'll leave it to its chance," he muttered; "a fire might come and burn it up some day.

If it is God's will to save Donald, he could so order it, and I am fully insured against pecuniary loss." He did not at that moment see how presumptuously he was throwing his own responsibility on God; he did not indeed want to see anything but some plausible way of avoiding a road too steep for a heart weighed down with earthly passion to dare.
Then weeks and months drifted away in the calm regular routine of David's life.

But though there were no outward changes, there was a very important inward one.

About sixteen months after Donald's departure he returned to visit Christine.