Your mother was still beautiful, Geoffrey, and he may have given her choice between flight and death.

Seek to know no more, son'-- and suddenly my father hid his face in his hands and broke into sobs that were dreadful to hear.
'Would that you had told us this tale before, father,' I said so soon as I could speak.

'Then there would have lived a devil the less in the world to-day, and I should have been spared a long journey.' Little did I know how long that journey would be!.