Durrance had lost everything which made life to him worth living the moment he went blind--everything, except one thing.

"What should I do if I were crippled ?" he had said to Harry Feversham on the morning when for the last time they had ridden together in the Row.

"A clever man might put up with it.

But what should I do if I had to sit in a chair all my days ?" Ethne had not heard the words, but she understood the man well enough without them.

He was by birth the inheritor of the other places, and he had lost his heritage.