‘Now let us look at the books,’ he said, going to the _secretaire_, the upper shelves of which held about thirty volumes, all well bound. They were Valpy’s Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Hood, and a few other volumes, chiefly Oxford classics, which Mr. Penwyn had brought from the University; not by any means the books of a man wanting in refinement or culture. That they had been well read was evident to Maurice, on looking into some of the volumes. Many a verse underlined in pencil marked the reader’s appreciation. In a volume of Byron, containing ‘Manfred,’ and some of the minor poems, Maurice found a pencilled note here and there, in a woman’s hand, which he recognised as Muriel Trevanard’s; words of praise or of criticism, but in all cases denoting a cultivated mind and a sound judgment. A girl who could write thus was hardly likely to have been fooled by the first seducer who came across her path. ‘I wonder who wrote in that book?’ said Viola. ‘George Penwyn had no sister, and his mother died while he was very young. Perhaps those notes were written by Miss Morgrave, the young lady his father wanted him to marry.’ ‘I should hardly have thought they were on intimate terms enough for that kind of thing.’ ‘True. One must be very sure of a person’s friendship before one can venture to scribble one’s opinions in their books,’ returned Viola. An hour later Maurice left the Manor House. He was glad to be alone, and free to think over the day’s work. The idea which had hitherto seemed little better than a baseless fancy, the filmy weaving of his own romantic dreams, was now conviction. He held it as a certain fact that Justina was George Penwyn’s daughter, and that it must be his work to discover the missing link in Muriel Trevanard’s story, and the nature of that fatal union which had ended in shattered wits and a broken heart. ‘God grant that I may find evidence to confirm my own belief in the girl’s purity and the man’s honour,’ he said to himself, as he drove the dog-cart back to Borcel End. ‘If the popular idea of George Penwyn is correct, he must have been too good a man to play so base a part as that of betrayer; too kind to leave his victim to face the storm of parental wrath unprotected. But he was in his father’s power, and it is possible that he might have had recourse to a secret marriage rather than forfeit the old man’s favour and the Penwyn estate. Yet if this were the case, it is strange that he should have left England without endeavouring to secure his wife’s safety—that he should have made no provision for his child’s birth—an event the possibility of which he ought to have foreseen.’ This was a puzzling point. Indeed, the whole story was involved in mystery. Either George Penwyn must have deceived everybody who knew him as to his moral character; or he must have acted honestly towards Muriel.