He sighed heavily as he thought of the results that had attended his compulsory wedding of her. In the intensity of his passion, in the blindness of his vanity, which made him confident--gloriously confident--that did he make himself her husband, she herself would make of him her lover before long, he had committed an unworthiness of which it seemed he might never cleanse himself in life. There was but one amend, as he had told her. Let him make it, and perhaps she would--out of gratitude, if out of no other feeling--come to think more kindly of him; and that night it seemed to him as he sat alone in that mean chamber that it were a better and a sweeter thing to earn some measure of her esteem by death than to continue in a life that inspired her hatred and resentment. From which it will be seen how utterly he disbelieved the protestations she had uttered in seeking to detain him. They were--he was assured--a part of a scheme, a trick, to lull him while Monmouth and his officers were being butchered. And she had gone the length of saying she loved him! He regretted that, being as he was convinced of its untruth. What cause had she to love him? She hated him, and because she hated him she did not scruple to lie to him--once with suggestions and this time with actual expression of affection--that she might gain her ends: ends that concerned her brother and Sir Rowland Blake. Sir Rowland Blake! The name was a very goad to his passion and despair.
He rose from the table and took a turn in the room, moving noiselessly in his stockinged feet. He felt the need of air and action; the weariness of his flesh incurred in his long ride from London was cast off or forgotten. He must go forth. He picked up his fine shoes of Spanish leather, but as luck would have it--little though he guessed the extent just then--he found them hardening, though still damp from the dews of Mr. Newlington's garden. He cast them aside, and, taking a key from his pocket, unlocked an oak cupboard and withdrew the heavy muddy boots in which he had ridden from town. He drew them on and, taking up his hat and sword, went down the creaking stairs and out into the street.
Bridgwater had fallen quiet by now; the army was gone and townsfolk were in their beds. Moodily, unconsciously, yet as if guided by a sort of instinct, he went down the High Street, and then turned off into the narrower lane that led in the direction of Lupton House. By the gates of this he paused, recalled out of his abstraction and rendered aware of whither his steps had led him by the sight of the hall door standing open, a black figure silhouetted against the light behind it. What was happening here? Why were they not abed like all decent folk?