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before him: How if the time should come when he could not forget, when every thought would be that and that only? Ghastly! It would make the Greek myth of the Furies terrifically true: a wretched soul fleeing, fleeing always, never daring to look behind lest it should behold the pursuing Terror, but with no refuge before it — none in all the hells.

He called for brandy — "the only remedy for the liver and preachments" — and drank with Moore until a warm glow pervaded him, and Destiny was less the blind, pursuing goddess than the fairy godmother who had provided beauty, birth, genius, good luck, all the coloured stars at his birth, and would do so to the end. He had not taken to laudanum with his brandy, as Caroline Lamb was to do later, and he was certain that he could dispense with it whenever he pleased, but meanwhile it was comforting in emergencies.

So the great day approached. Anne had not ventured up to London. She was better out of Caroline's sphere, and if Caroline was moodily silent, so best, he reflected.

Anne's own heart sang like a lark in the blue abysses of sunshine. She had never imagined that such happiness was possible. His letters — for it was judged best he should await the end of the lawyers' work before coming to Seaham Hall (where they were at present, Halnaby being reserved for the honeymoon) — were the letters of a sensitive, intellectual girl's realized hopes. Who could write, could feel like this prince of men — her own, immortally her own! When his great name was handed down in the annals of England, as it must surely be, the sun of poets, the glorious Apollo, hers would be linked with it, a little, shining satellite travelling on that vast orbit. What had she ever done to deserve this crown of honour? Nothing but love him. But that — if she could believe his letters — was all in all to him. Love is enough.