Is that cruelty, my son?
Or is it a fine keeping to a given word?
It looks to me more like a noble sacrifice, unless the Seigneur of Arranstoun was aware before he ever came here that Madame Howard was his wife." Lord Fordyce controlled himself.

This thing must be thought out.
"No, Michael could not have known it," after a moment or two he averred.

"He even laughed over the name when I told it to him, and said he had a scapegrace cousin out in Arizona and wondered if the husband could be the same----" Then further recollections came with a frightful stab of anguish, crushing all passion and anger and leaving only a sensation of pain, for he remembered that his friend had given him his word of honor that he would not interfere with him in his love-making--and, indeed, would help him in every way he could, even to lending him Arranstoun for the honeymoon! That letter of his, too, when he had gone from Heronac, saying in it casually he hoped that he, Henry, thought that he had played the game!--Yes, it was all perfectly plain.

Michael had come there in all innocence, and could not be blamed.

He remembered numbers of things unnoticed at the time--his own talk with Sabine when he had discussed Michael's marriage--and this brought him up suddenly to her side of the question.