And in this reflection her pride in him increased, and she
thanked God for a lover who in all things was a giant among men.
But Sir John Killigrew did not die. He hovered between this world and
a better one for some seven days, at the end of which he began to
recover. By October he was abroad again, gaunt and pale, reduced to
half the bulk that had been his before, a mere shadow of a man.
One of his first visits was to Godolphin Court. He went to remonstrate
with Rosamund upon her betrothal, and he did so at the request of her
brother. But his remonstrances were strangely lacking in the force
that she had looked for.
The odd fact is that in his near approach to death, and with his
earthly interest dwindling, Sir John had looked matters frankly in the
face, and had been driven to the conclusion--a conclusion impossible to
him in normal health--that he had got no more than he deserved. He
realized that he had acted unworthily, if unconscious at the time of
the unworthiness of what he did; that the weapons with which he had
fought Sir Oliver were not the weapons that become a Gentleman or in
which there is credit to be won. He perceived that he had permitted
his old enmity for the house of Tressilian, swollen by a sense of
injury lately suffered in the matter of the licence to build at
Smithick, to warp his judgment and to persuade him that Sir Oliver was
all he had dubbed him. He realized that jealousy, too, had taken a
hand in the matter.
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