"I don't know that I exactly want to get away from you," said Cynthia, smiling; "but I think that perhaps I must."

The smile was a very woeful little affair after all.

"Must! I don't think I shall ever let you go again!"

He tightened his clasp. She looked up into his face with beseeching eyes.

"Do take away your arm, please, Hubert! I want to talk to you, and I cannot if it is there."

"Then we will leave it there. I don't think I want to talk, darling. I am very tired--I think I must have walked miles last night before I came back to this door to hand my lady out of her carriage, and I want to be petted and spoken to kindly."

Cynthia's fingers twitched and she turned her head aside, but not before Hubert had noticed the peculiar expression that crossed her face. Being a play-writer and constant theatre-goer, his mind was full of theatrical reminiscences. He remembered at that moment to have noticed that peculiar twitch, that odd expression of countenance, in Sarah Bernhardt when she was acting the part of a profoundly jealous woman. It had then meant, "Go to my rival, to her whom you love, and be comforted--do not come to me!" But there was no likeness between the great tragic actress and Cynthia West either of character or of circumstance; and Cynthia had no cause to be jealous. But he thought of the momentary impression afterwards.

She turned her face back again with as sweet a smile as ever.

"You think you must always have your own way; but I want to be considered too. I have something to tell you, and I shall not be happy until it is said. If you are tired, you shall sit down in this chair--it is much more comfortable than it looks--and have some tea, and then we can talk. But Madame may be in by half-past six, and I want to get it all over before she comes."

"'Getting it all over' sounds as if something disagreeable were to follow!" said Hubert, releasing her and taking the chair she proffered.

"No tea, thank you; I had some at my club before I came. Now what is it, dear? But sit down; I can't sit, you know, if you stand."

"I must stand," said Cynthia, with a touch of imperiousness. "I am the criminal, and you are the judge. The criminal always stands."

"It is a very innocent criminal and a very unworthy judge in this instance. 'Sit, Jessica.'"

She laughed and drew a chair forward. Sitting down, he saw that her figure fell at once into a weary, languid attitude, and that the smile faded suddenly from her face. He put his hand on hers.

"What is it, my dearest?" he said, seriously this time.

She raised her eyes, and they were full of tears.

"It is of no use trying to speak lightly about it," she said. "I may as well tell you that it is a very important matter, Hubert. I sent for you to-day to tell you that we must part."

"Nonsense, Cynthia!"

"We must indeed! The worst is that we might have avoided all this trouble--this misery--if I had been candid and open with you from the first. If I had told you all about myself, you would perhaps never have helped me--or at least--for I won't say that exactly--you would have helped me from a distance, and never cared to see me or speak to me at all."

"Of course you know that you are talking riddles, Cynthia."

"Yes, I know. But you will understand in a minute or two. I only want to say, first, that I had no idea who--who you were."

"Who I am, dear? Myself, Hubert Lepel, and nobody else."

"And cousin"--she brought the words out with difficulty--"cousin to the Vanes of Beechfield."

"Well, what objection have you to the Vanes of Beechfield?"

"They have the right to object to me; and so have you. Do you remember the evening when I spoke to you in the street outside the theatre? Did it never cross your mind that you had seen and spoken to me before? You asked me once if I knew a girl called Jane Wood. Now don't you remember me? Now don't you know my name?"

Hubert had risen to his feet. His face was ghastly pale; but there was a horror in it which even Cynthia could not interpret aright.

"You--you, Jane Wood!" he gasped. "Don't trifle with me, Cynthia! You are Cynthia West!"

"Cynthia Janet Westwood, known at St. Elizabeth's as Janie Wood."

"You--you are Westwood's child?"

She silently bowed her head.

"Oh, Cynthia, Cynthia, if you had but told me before!"

He sank down into his chair again, burying his face in his hands with his elbows on his knees. There was a look of self-abasement, of shame and sorrow in his attitude inexplicable to Cynthia. Finding that he did not speak, she took up her tale again in low, uneven tones.

"I knew that I ought to tell you. I said that I would tell you everything before--before we were married, if ever it came to that. I ought to have done so at once; but it was so difficult. They had changed my name when I went to school so that nobody should know; they told me that it would be a disgrace to have it known. I ran away from St.

Elizabeth's because I had been fool enough to let it out. I could not face the girls when they knew that--that my father was called a murderer."

Hubert drew his breath hard. She tried to answer what she thought was the meaning of that strange sound, half moan, half sigh.

"I never called him so," she said. "You will not believe it, of course; but I know that my father would never have done the deed that you attribute to him. He was kind, good, tender-hearted, although he lived in rebellion against some of the ordinary laws of society. There was nothing base or mean about him. If he had killed a man, he would not have told lies about it; he would have said that he had done it and borne the punishment. He was a brave man; he was not a murderer."

Still Hubert did not answer. He dared not let her see his face; she must not know the torture her words inflicted on him. She went on.

"Lately I have thought that it would be better for me to face the whole thing out, and not act as if I were ashamed of my father, who is no murderer, but a martyr and an innocent man. I took my first step last night by telling your aunt Miss Vane that 'West' was only an assumed name. I had never said that before. Do you remember how she looked at me--how she hated me--when we stood outside the gates of Beechfield Park that afternoon? The sight of me made her ill; and, if she knew me by my right name, it would make her ill again. If I had known that you were their cousin, I would never have let you see my face!"

"Cynthia, have a little mercy!" cried Hubert, suddenly starting up, and dashing his hair back from his discolored, distorted face. "Do you think I am such a brute? What does it matter to me about your father? Was I so unkind, so cruel to you when you were a child that you cannot trust me now?"

"No," she said, looking at him gently, but with a sort of aloofness which he had never seen in her before; "you were very good to me then.

You saved me from the workhouse; you would not even let me go to the charity-school that Mrs. Rumbold recommended. You told me to be a good girl, and said that some day I should see my father again." She put her hand to her throat, as if choked by some hysteric symptom, but at once controlled herself and went on. "I see it all now. It was through you, I suppose, that I was sent to St. Elizabeth's, where I was made into something like a civilised being. It was you to whom they applied as to whether I should be removed from the lower to the upper school; and you--out of your charity to the murderer's daughter--you paid for me forty pounds a year. I did not know that I had so much to be grateful for to you. I have taken gifts from you since, not knowing; but this is the last of it--I will never take another now!"

"Are you so proud, Cynthia, that you cannot bear me to have helped you a little? My love, I did not know, I never guessed that you were Westwood's daughter. But can you never forgive me for having done my best for you. Do you think I love you one whit the less?"

"Oh, I see--you think that I am ungenerous," cried Cynthia, "and that it is my pride which stands in your way! Well, so it is--this kind of pride--that I will not accept gifts from those who believe my father to be a guilty man when I believe in his innocence. They did well never to tell me who was my benefactor--for whom I was taught to pray when I was at St. Elizabeth's. If I had known, the place would not have held me for a day when I was old enough to understand! At first I was too ignorant, too much stupefied by the whole thing to understand that the Vanes were keeping me at school and supporting me. It is horrible--it is sickening--to send my father to prison, to the gallows, and his child to school! Much better have let me go to the workhouse! Do you think I wish to be indebted to people who think my father a murderer?"

"You mistake!" said Hubert quickly. "The Vanes knew nothing about it. If Mrs. Rumbold ever said so, it was my fault. I did not like her to think that I was doing it alone. And, as for me, Cynthia, I never thought your father guilty--never!"

He trembled beneath the burning gaze she turned on him, and his color changed from white to red, and then to white again. He felt as if he had been guilty of the meanest subterfuge of his whole life.

"You never thought so?" she said, with a terrible gasp. "Then who was guilty? Who did that murder, Hubert? Do--you--know?"

She could not say, "Was your sister guilty, and are you shielding her?"

He looked at her helplessly. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth; he could not speak. With a bitter cry she fell upon her knees before him and seized his hands.

"You know--you know! Oh, Hubert, clear my father's name! Never mind whom you sacrifice! Let the punishment fall on the head of the wrong-doer not on my dear, dear father's! I will forgive you for having been silent so long, if now you will only speak. I will love you always, I will give you my life, if you will but let the truth be known!"

He gathered his forces together by an almost superhuman effort, and managed to speak at last; but the sweat stood in great drops on his brow.

"Cynthia, don't--don't speak so, for God's sake! I know nothing, I have nothing to say!"

Clinging to his knees, she looked up at him, her eyes full of supplication.