Even his sudden going home, with the object of frightening his wife out of a marriage which would have been no marriage, had something of the character of a jest in it. But there was no longer any jest in the matter. He had seen his wife, he had seen his son, and he was at last aware of what it was he had done--the darker aspect of it--the dishonour to others, the deadly extinction of himself, the end of everything which he had accomplished, almost with a light heart. A ghost indeed, offending the eyes and chilling the very soul of those who were most near and dear to him. “A swindler,” the boy had said. Was he a swindler? To be sure the insurance offices would never have paid that money had they known; but surely he had paid the price for it. He had died to all intents and purposes. He had given himself for his children--a living sacrifice--not less, but more than if he had really died and been thrown up by the sea, as everybody believed, on Portobello sands. It is hard to see guilt in a transaction, not for your own advantage, for which you have given your life. Robert Dalyell did not blame his son; he could perceive that there was much in what Fred said, though his heart swelled in his breast against that injustice. He was not angry with Fred, but much impressed, and moved (strangely enough) to something like satisfaction by his son’s demeanour. The boy was a good boy, wounded in his honour, and therefore inexorable, but only as a good man would wish his boy to be. He was glad Fred was an honourable fellow, feeling it like that. Poor Dalyell himself had all the instincts and habits of mind of an honourable man; he had not seen the dishonour in it; he had thought that, giving his life for it as he had done, there was nothing morally wrong in his act. Surely he had bought the money dear: it was not for him; it was for them, and for their good. There they were, all of them--the wife who was about to give him a successor within two years, and the boy who was himself his successor--safe in Yalton, honoured, respected, enjoying the position to which they were born: while he was an outcast, without anything but what he made for himself, and the boy called him a swindler! He was an honest boy for all that, and Dalyell’s mind had a certain forlorn satisfaction in it: though a more forlorn being than he, walking, walking like a ghost through that morning light which began in its pearly paleness to warm to the rising of the sun, could not be. It was wonderful at what leisure he was, in the utter forlornness of his being, to think of them all. He was not sorry that he had given himself to save them. The only thing he was sorry for was that, being dead, he had interfered at all. He ought to have gone upon his own way--married, too, as he might have done, and got himself new ties in his new life. He believed now that there would have been no harm in that. There would be no harm in it. He would get away as quickly as it was practicable, and get back to his new world, and this time he would feel himself really emancipated. He would think no more of the bonds of the past. She should be free to marry if she liked, and so would he. This old world and he had nothing to do with each other any more.