"Oh, my darling," he said, "I am the last man that you ought ever to have loved!"

"But I love you now, Hubert."

"I am a villian, Cynthia--a mean miserable cur! Can't you accept that fact, and leave me without asking why?"

"No, I cannot, Hubert; I don't believe it."

"It is no good telling me that--I know myself too well. Believe all that I say, Cynthia, and give me up. Don't make me tell you why."

"I shall always love you," she whispered, "whether you are bad or good."

"Suppose that I had injured any one that was very dear to you--saved myself from punishment at his expense? I daren't go any farther. Is there nothing that you can suppose that I have done--the very hardest thing in the whole world for you to forgive? You can't forgive it, I know; to tell you means to cut myself off from you for the rest of my life; and yet I cannot make up my mind to take advantage of your ignorance. I have resolved, Cynthia, that I will not say another word of--of love to you--until you know the truth."

She gazed at him, her lips growing white, her eyes dilating with sudden terror.

"There is only one thing," she said at length, "that I--that I----"

"That you could not forgive. I am answered, Cynthia; it is that one thing that I have done."

He spoke very calmly, but his face was white with a pallor like that of death. She remained motionless; it seemed as if she could scarcely dare to breathe, and her face was as pale as his own.

"Hubert," she said presently, only just above her breath, "you must be saying what you do not mean!"

"I would to God that I did not mean it!" he exclaimed, bestirring himself and trying to rise. "Get up, Cynthia; I cannot lie here and see you kneeling there. Rather let me kneel to you; for I have wronged you--I have wronged your father beyond forgiveness. It was I--I who killed Sydney Vane!"

He was standing now; but she still knelt beside the sofa, with her face full of terror.

"Hubert," she said caressingly, "you do not know what you say. Sit down, my darling, and keep quiet. You will be better soon."

"I am not raving," he answered her; "I am only speaking the truth. God help me! All these years I have kept the secret, Cynthia; but it is true--I swear before God that it is true! It was I who killed Sidney Vane. Now curse me if you will, as your father did long years ago."

He fell back on the sofa, and buried his face in his hands with a moan of intolerable pain.

There came a long silence. Cynthia did not move; she also had hidden her face.

"Oh," she said at last, "I do not know what to do! My poor father--my poor father! Think of the shame and anguish that he went through! Oh, how could you bear to let him suffer so?" And then she wept bitterly and unrestrainedly; and Hubert sat with his head bowed in his hands.

But after a time she became calm; and then, without looking up, she said, in a low voice--

"I should like to hear it all now. Tell me how it happened."

He started and removed his hands from his face. It was so haggard, so miserable, that Cynthia, as she glanced at him, could not forbear an impulse of pity. But she averted her head and would not look at him again.

"You must tell me everything now," she said.

And so he told the story. He found it hard to begin; but as he went on, a certain relief came to him, in spite of shame and sorrow, at the disburthening himself of his secret. He did not spare himself. He told the tale very fully, and, little by little, it seemed to Cynthia that she began to understand his life, his character, his very soul, as she had never understood them before. She understood, but she did not love.

The confession left her cold; her father's wrongs had turned her heart to stone.

"And now," he said, when he had finished his story, "you can fetch your father and clear him in the eyes of the world as soon as you like. I will take any punishment that the law allots me. But I think that I shall not have to bear it long. Even a life sentence ends one day, thank God!"

Then Cynthia spoke.

"You think," she said very coldly, "that I shall tell your story--that I shall denounce you to the police?"

"As you please, Cynthia," he answered, with a sadness born of despair.

"You throw the burden on me!" she said. "You have thrown your burdens on other people's shoulders all your life, it seems. But now you must bear your own." She rose and moved away from him. "I shall not accuse you.

Your confession is safe enough with me. You forget that I--I loved you once. I cannot give you up to justice even for my father's sake. You must manage the matter for yourself."

"Cynthia," he cried hoarsely--"Cynthia, be merciful!"

"Had you any mercy for my father?" she asked him, looking at him with eyes in which the reproach was terrible to his inmost soul. "Did you ever think what he had to bear?" Her hand was on the door. "I am going now," she said--"I am going to my father; I have learned the place in which he lives. But I shall not tell him what you have just told me.

Justify him to the world if you like; till that is done, I will never speak to you again."

"Cynthia--Cynthia!" cried the wretched man.

He rose from the sofa and stretched out his arms blindly towards her.

But she would not relent.

As she left the room, he fell to the floor--insensible for the second time that day. She heard the crashing fall--she knew that he was in danger; but her heart was hardened, and she would not look back. The only thing she did was to call Jenkins before she left the house and send him to his master. And then she went out into the street, and said to herself that she would never enter the house again.

Jenkins went up to the drawing-room, and found Mr. Lepel lying on the floor. He and his wife managed with some difficulty to get him back to bed. Then they sent for the Doctor. But, when the Doctor came, he shook his head, and looked very serious over Hubert's state. A relapse had taken place; he was delirious again; and no one could say whether he would recover from this second attack. Cynthia was asked for at once; but Cynthia was nowhere to be found.

"She will come back, no doubt, sir," Jenkins said.

"I hope she will," the Doctor answered, "for Mr. Lepel's chances are considerably lessened by her absence."

But the night passed, and the next day followed, and the next; but Cynthia never came.

In the meantime there was one person in the house who knew more of her than she chose to say. Miss Sabina Meldreth had been keeping her eye, by Mrs. Vane's orders, upon Cynthia West. She had listened at the door during the conversation between Enid and Hubert, but without much result. Their voices had been subdued, and she had gained nothing for her pains. But it was somewhat different during the interview between Cynthia and Hubert. The emotion of the two speakers had been rather too difficult to repress. Some few of Hubert's words, as well as Cynthia's passionate sobs, had reached her ears; and Cynthia's last sentences, spoken in a clear penetrating voice, had not been lost on her. She was behind the folding-door between the two rooms when Cynthia made her exit. Sabina Meldreth's heart beat with excitement. Miss West would go to her father, would she? Then she, Sabina, would follow her--would track the felon to his hiding-place! The hint that Hubert could clear him if he would was lost upon her in the delight of this discovery. She could not afford to miss this opportunity of pleasing Mrs. Vane and earning three hundred pounds. She followed Cynthia down-stairs, seized a hat from a peg in the hall, and walked out into the street.

It was already dark, but the girl's tall graceful figure was easily discernible at some little distance. Miss Meldreth followed her hurriedly; she was determined to lose no chance of discovering Westwood and delivering him up to the authorities.

Down one street after another did she track the convict's daughter.

Cynthia went through quiet quarters--if she had ventured into a crowded thoroughfare, she would soon have been lost to view. But she had no suspicion that she was being pursued, or she might have been more careful. In a quiet little court on the north side of Holborn she presently came to a halt. There was a dingy little house with "Lodgings to Let" on a card in the window, and at the door of this house she stopped and gave three knocks with her knuckles. In a few moments the door was opened, and she stepped in. Sabina could not see who admitted her.

She waited for some time. A light appeared after a while in an upper window, and one or two shadows crossed the white linen blind. Sabina went a little higher up the court and watched. Shadows came again--first, the shadow of a woman with a hat upon her head--ah, that was Miss West!--next that of a man--nearer the window and more distinct.

Sabina thought that she recognised the slight stoop of the shoulders, the stiff and halting gait.

"I've caught you at last, have I, Mr. Reuben Dare!" she said to herself, with a chuckle, as she noted the number of the house and the name of the court. "Well, I shall get three hundred pounds for this night's work!

I'll wait a bit and see what happens next."

What happened next was that the lights were extinguished and that the house seemed to be shut up.

"Safe for the night!" said Sabina, chuckling to herself. "I won't let the grass grow under my feet this time. I'll tell the police to-morrow morning, and I'll write to Mrs. Vane as well. He shan't escape us now!"

She retraced her steps to Russell Square, and at once indited a letter to Mrs. Vane with a full account of all that she had seen and heard. She slipped out to post it that very night, and lay down with the full intention of going to Scotland Yard the next morning. But in the morning she was delayed for an hour only; but that hour was fatal to her plans.

When the police visited the house in Vernon Court, they found that the rooms were empty, and that Cynthia and her father had disappeared.