The poor darling little girl to be left to suffer all alone! Oh! how tender and passionately devoted he would have been under the same circumstances.

Would Michael ever make her happy or take proper care of her?
He paced his room, his mind racked with pain.

Every single turn of events came back to him, and his own incredible blindness.

How had he been so unseeing?
How, to begin with, had he not recalled the name of Sabine as being the one he had read long ago in the paper as that of the girl whom Michael had gone through the ceremony of marriage with?
It had faded completely from his memory.

Everything seemed to have combined to lead him on to predestined disaster and misery--even in Sabine's and Michael's combining to keep the matter secret from him not to cause him pain--all had augmented the suffering now.