“Ailinon! Ailinon!” he muttered to himself, as he leaned his stomach against that vibrant rope. “Ailinon! Ailinon!” And the very utterance of this tragic cry from the old Greek dramas soothed his mind as if it had been a talisman. But the disgust he felt at the pressure of things at that moment extended itself to this whole fairground, extended itself even to the prospect of seeing Gerda again. “How can I face her in the midst of all this?” he thought; and he recalled the outline of his mother’s profile, so contemptuously lifted towards Albert Smith. “What will she think of the Torp family?” he said to himself, in miserable discomfort.

Struggling against this wretched mood, he straightened his back and clutched the rope with both his hands. Savagely he tried to summon up out of the depths of his spirit some current of defiant magnetism. But the presence of Mr. Urquhart, taciturn and pensive though the squire had become, seemed to cut off all help from these furtive resources.

So he sought to steady himself by pure reason.