"It is impossible!" cried the General. "To begin with, if you had committed this crime--for a duel in the way you mention was a crime and nothing else--you would never have allowed this man to suffer for it. I absolutely refuse to believe, sir, that my kinsman is such a base, cowardly villain! This is a fit of delirium--nothing else!"

"It is simple truth," said Hubert sadly. "That I did not at once exonerate Andrew Westwood is, to my thinking, the worst part of my crime. I acknowledge that I--I dared not confess; and I left him to bear the blame."

"Good heavens, sir, do you tell me that to my face?" thundered the old man, with uplifted hand. "You are a disgrace to the family! I am glad that you do not bear my name."

He would perhaps even have struck the younger man if Cynthia had not twined her arms more closely round Hubert's neck, and made herself for the moment a defence to him. But Hubert drew himself away.

"Let me go, Cynthia," he said quietly. "You must not come between us.

The General is right, and I am a disgrace to my name. He must do what he thinks fit."

But the General had turned away, and was walking furiously up and down the room, too angry and too much overcome for speech. Miss Vane was sobbing bitterly. Flossy watched her brother's face. She saw that he was trying not to implicate her. Would she escape? If his silence and her own could save her, she would be safe. But she had reckoned without Andrew Westwood.

"I beg pardon, sir," said Cynthia's father, addressing himself to the General; "but this ain't fair! Mr. Lepel is getting more of the blame than he deserves. Suppose you let me speak a word for him?"

"You!" said the General, stopping short. "You, who have suffered his punishment, cannot have much to say for him! If--if this is true," he went on, with a curious mixture of stiffness and of shame, "we have much to answer for with respect to you--much to make up----"

"Not so much as maybe you think," said Andrew Westwood. "I was bitter enough at the time, and I have thought often and often of the words that I said at the trial--how I cursed the man that brought me to that pass and all that he held dear. Curses come home to roost, they say. At any rate, the person who is dearest to him, I believe, is my very own daughter, whom I myself love better that any one in the whole wide world; and far be it from me to wish evil to her or to any one that she loves."

Miss Vane's handkerchief fell to her lap. The General stared at the speaker open-mouthed. The man's native nobility of soul amazed them both. Andrew Westwood went on soberly.

"You have not asked Mr. Lepel how he came to fight Mr. Vane, sir. You might be sure that it wasn't for a poor reason; and there was never anything considered dishonorable in a fair fight between two armed men."

"That does not do away with the injury to yourself," said the General grimly. "Such blame as there was ought to have been borne by him and not by you."

Westwood waved his hand.

"As for injury," he said, "me and Cynthia have agreed to forget about that. If I'd been at Portland all this time, why, then no doubt I should feel it worse. But I got away after four years of it, and made my way to America, and 'struck ile' there. I've done better since then than, ever I did in my life before; so I have no need to complain. But you haven't asked him why he fought Mr. Vane, sir."

"Well, why was it?" said the General sternly and grudgingly.

He did not see that his wife suddenly rose from her seat, and with clasped hands darted a look full of miserable fear and entreaty towards her brother. But all the others saw, though some of them did not understand; and Hubert responded to the appeal.

"I cannot tell you," he answered, with his eyes on the ground.

"But I can!" said Westwood. "And Mrs. Vane could, if she chose! Blame her if you like, sir, for she's known the truth all along as much as Mr.

Hubert's done; and it was to save her that he would not open his lips."

They had tried in vain to stop him--Hubert by angry imperative words, Flossy by a piteous cry of terror; but Westwood's rough sonorous voice rose above all other sounds. He paused for a moment, looking at the General's face of incredulous dismay, at Mrs. Vane's shrinking figure, and his tones softened a little as he spoke again.

"I don't wish to say more myself than is necessary. Miss Lepel as she was then and Mr. Sydney Vane were in the habit of meeting each other in the wood. Many of the village people knew it--it was common talk in Beechfield. Mr. Lepel found it out and was angry. He told Mr. Vane there must be no more of it; and then the quarrel followed that Mr. Lepel speaks about. I don't want to make too much of it"--casting a reluctant glance at Hubert--"but I think that Mr. Lepel was right in objecting and in trying to put a stop to it."

It was certain that he had very much softened the facts of the case; but the General could not have looked more confounded, or Flossy more overwhelmed, if a great deal more had been said. The veins swelled upon the old man's forehead, his face grew lividly purple as he strode over to his wife's side and laid his hand heavily on her shoulder.

"Florence, is this true?" he said.

She sat mute and shrinking in her chair, crushed as if beneath an invisible weight--her hands clasped, her white face averted. Miss Vane, watching her eagerly, felt with a thrill of horror that she looked like a guilty woman.

"Is this true?" the General asked again, giving her a little shake. But Flossy still sat mute.

Then Miss Vane interposed.

"Let her alone, Richard," she said. "She is overcome--she cannot answer just now. She will explain everything by-and-by."

"Speak!" cried the General, his eyes blazing with rage. He would have shaken her again and more violently if Hubert had not interfered.

"You forget, sir, that she is a woman and that she is your wife," he said. "Whatever may have happened in the past, she has no doubt regretted what was an imprudence. I was to blame for taking up the matter too seriously. You know what your brother was; I know my sister.

We must judge them by what we know."

The words were halting and ambiguous; but they produced some effect. The General fell back, still gazing at his wife; and Flossy, released from the pressure of his heavy hand, sat up and looked about her with a strange red light glowing in her eyes. Then, to everybody's horror, she burst into a fit of wild laughter terrible to hear.

"He says that he knows his sister!" she cried. "Oh, yes--he knows her well enough! What maudlin stuff will he talk next? 'Imprudence' in meeting each other in the wood! I tell you that Sydney Vane loved me--that he was ready to abandon wife and child for me!"

"Florence, have mercy! Stop--stop!" cried Hubert. But his sister would not stop.

"He was ready to go to the world's end with me, I tell you! We had arranged to start the next day--we were going to Ceylon, never to come back again. We meant to be happy because we loved each other. That was what Hubert found out!" she cried, laughing wildly. "That was what he tried to stop! That was why he killed Sydney Vane--the man I loved--oh, Heaven, the man for whom I would have sold my very soul!"

And then the hysteric passion overcame her, and she fell back in a frenzy of laughter, sobs, and screams, painful alike to see and hear.

Cynthia, Miss Vane, and Sabina went to her aid. Between them they carried her into another room, whence her terrible screams resounded at intervals through the house; and the three men were left alone. The General sank down upon a chair near the table and hid his face in his hands. He was breathing heavily, and every now and then a moan escaped him in the silence of the room.

"Oh, Heaven," he said, "what have I done that this should come upon me all at once? What have I done?"

Hubert, exhausted by the excitement that he had gone through, staggered to the sofa and threw himself down upon it. Westwood remained in his former position, grasping the back of a chair and looking from one to the other, as if he were anxious to help, but knew not how to offer any assistance. In the silence that prevailed, the sound of heavy footsteps could be distinctly heard upon the stairs. The police had arrived at last.

Almost immediately Cynthia and Sabina Meldreth returned to the room.

They had left Miss Vane with Florence, who seemed more manageable when her aunt touched her and spoke to her than with anybody else. And, as soon as they came in, Cynthia went up to Hubert, kissed him, and sat down beside him, holding her hand in his. But Sabina Meldreth looked fixedly at the General.

"Don't take on, sir!" she said, going up to the table and speaking rather softly. "She ain't worth it--she's a reg'lar bad 'un, she is!"

"Woman, how dare you!" cried the poor General, starting from his seat, and turning his discolored face, his bloodshot eyes, angrily upon the intruder. "I do not believe a word--a word you say! My wife is--is above reproach--my wife--the mother of my boy!" There was a curious little hitch in his speech, as if he could not say the words he wanted to say.

"The mother of your boy!" cried Sabina, with intense scorn. "Much mother she was to him! Look here, sir! I'll own the truth now, and perhaps it will soften things a bit to you. The boy was not Mrs. Vane's at all--he was mine."

Everyone started. The General uttered an inarticulate cry of rage; then his head dropped on his hands, and he did not speak again. In vain Hubert tried to silence the speaker.

"Keep your story for another time," he said. "There is no need to make such accusations now. You cannot substantiate them, and you are only paining General Vane."

"You'd better ask Miss Enid, sir," said the woman half defiantly, half desperately. "She knows. It troubled her a good bit as to whether she ought to tell the General or not; but I believe she decided not. Mrs.

Vane thought that if she married you you would keep her quiet. My mother confessed it all to Miss Enid on her death-bed. I expect the Rector knows too by this time. He was always trying to get it out of me."

"Can this be true?" said Hubert, half to himself and half to the General. But the old man, with his head bowed upon the table, did not seem to hear.

"It's true as Gospel!" said Sabina. "And I don't much care who knows it now. My prospects are all gone, as far as I can make out. This gentleman here is not the murderer, it seems, and so I sha'n't get the three hundred pounds for finding him; and Mrs. Vane's payments will be stopped now, no doubt. She was giving me two hundred a year. I'll take less if you like to give me something, sir, for going away and holding my tongue. When Mrs. Vane knew about--about me, and mother was in trouble over my misfortune, it was just at the time when your own little baby was born, sir. It was a boy too, and it died when it was only twelve hours old. And Mrs. Vane spoke to mother about my baby that was just the same age; and mother and I both thought it would be a good thing if my little boy could be made the heir of Beechfield Hall. For in that way Mrs. Vane's position would be better, and she would be able to pay mother and me a good round sum. And so we settled it. But now poor little Dick's dead and gone, and all Mrs. Vane's schemes have come to naught. Mother always said that there would be a bad ending to the affair."

"You seem to have forgotten, young woman," said Andrew Westwood sternly, "that there is a God above us all who takes care of the innocent and punishes the guilty."

"I'd not forgotten it," said Sabina, confronting him with an unabashed air; "but I hadn't believed it till now."

At that moment an inspector in plain clothes, who had been hastily fetched from Scotland Yard, made his way into the room and inquired what he was wanted for.