"Hannah," he said, "I want to talk to you. I want your advice. We're in a devil of a mess." "It's the wedding-dress, or the wedding-cake!" I said, staring at him. "One of them hasn't come!" "It's about Marston. Something I only heard to-day. He must not be allowed to marry my sister." "Hughie!" He took his hand from my arm, laid it on one of the tables spread with the presents. There was a faint ringing of silver and china to show the hand was not steady. He is a self-contained, sturdily-built, matter-of-fact young man in the early twenties; quite unlike his sister, whose appearance is elegantly fragile, who is filled with nerves, and sensitive to the fingertips. "I got a letter this morning," he went on, and for a moment fumbled in his coat-pocket as if with the intention, quickly relinquished, of showing it. "It was from a woman; telling me of certain incidents in Marston's career." "Probably all made up. Lies." "It isn't. Once for all, don't waste time in saying that. I went up this morning to the address she gave me. I saw her. She told me worse than she wrote--poor wretch! I didn't take it for gospel. I got confirmation, all round. There isn't room for the shadow of a doubt. She left her husband a year ago for Marston----" "A year ago? Only a year?" "A year. The husband got a divorce; this brute refused to marry her." "Oh, Hugh!" "It's worse. I can't tell you all. Sufficient that he played the traitor, the coward, the beast. Left her to face shame, and poverty, and--everything, alone." "Can it be so bad! You are certain?" He lifted the unsteady hand and laid it open, heavily again upon the table where the Crown Derby coffee services, the silver inkstands, muffineers and bridge boxes, whose donors had not even been thanked, jingled with a tiny music once more. "Certain. Now, don't keep repeating that word, Hannah. I don't want to waste time producing proofs, but I've got them. It's as certain as death. And it's not the only thing. Once I was on his track--late in the day as it was--I learnt more. We live so in a hole, down here, and nothing like this has ever come near us. We've taken people for what they seemed to be--as I, ass that I was, took Marston--and never poked into their histories. The man's got a bad record, all along. Decent people have closed their doors in his face." "_What_ will you do, Hugh? What _can_ you do now?" "Do? Stop the marriage," he said. He glared for a minute upon the costly display on the table, then turned his back on it all, and carried his white face to the window. "My sister shall never marry that scoundrel," he said. "Daphne's heart will break." "I know." He looked out on the wintry landscape with gloomy eyes, and a resolutely held underlip. "That is what my mother says. I do not believe it; but if it is so, it does not alter what is the right and only course to take." "What else does your mother say?"