necessary accomplishment for a gentleman in his day was a thorough
knowledge of the chase as a fine art in all its branches, from falconry
to boar-hunting, and in this respect Gilbert was at least the equal of
the average young noble. In spite of his youth, he was therefore
thoroughly equipped for the world; and besides the advantages here set
forth, he had the very great one of feeling that, although he might be
going among strangers, he was going to meet men all brought up to act
and think like himself, in the belief that their ways of acting and
thinking were very much better than those of other people.

But as he rode along the dunes, he was not reflecting upon his own
gifts or prospects. His life was strange to him by its sudden and
complete change, from an existence of more or less peaceful enjoyment,
in which the certainty of fortune, local dignity, and unthwarted love
made the idea of ambition look empty and foolish, to the state of
possessing only a pair of good horses, good weapons, and a little ready
money, with which to lay siege to the universe. Yet even that wide
difference of conditions was insignificant beside the deeper and sadder
misfortunes upon which the young man brooded as he rode, and which had
already embittered his young existence by the destruction of his
highest and most beautiful illusion and of his dearest and happiest
hope.

In the fall of his mother's image from the altar upon which he had set
it, there was the absolute destruction of his own past childhood as it
had always appeared to him. In the fearful illumination of her true
nature, in the broad glare of evil, the little good there might have
been had faded to nothing. It was not possible that she who had married
her husband's murderer within the month could ever have felt one
sincere impulse of love for Raymond Warde, nor that she could ever have