How He Cared

There were no vain regrets in him now; no regret of life, for this he always held in his own hand ready to toss it away for a fancy of an ideal—no regret of the might-have-been because he was a philosopher, and the very moment that love for the unattainable was born in his heart he had already realized that love to him could only mean a memory.

Therefore when he watched the preparations out there in the mist, and heard the heavy blows upon the wooden planks of the gibbet and the murmurs of his sympathizers at their work, he only smiled gently, self-deprecatingly, but always good-humouredly.

If the Lord of Stoutenburg only knew how little he really cared.

—Baroness Orczy, The Laughing Cavalier.