When Morrice returned to Deanery Street about four o’clock he went straight up to Rosabelle’s room. The girl was seated in a chair, trying to read; he noticed that she looked very sorrowful and that she had been crying. She had a most sympathetic nature, and although she could find no excuse for Mrs. Morrice, she could not but feel a certain compassion for the wretched woman who in the course of a few hours had lost home and husband, all that seemed to make life worth living. “Has she gone?” asked the financier in a hard voice. “Yes, she came down to lunch a few minutes after you went out. She spoke hardly a word while the servants were present, but when we had finished she asked me to come up to her boudoir, and in a broken voice and with many tears she told me what had happened, that you had ordered her to be out of the house before you came back to it.” “Did she tell you the reasons that impelled me to that apparently harsh step?” Rosabelle nodded. “Yes, she told me that she was very fond of Archie Brookes and that he traded upon her affection for him; that it was owing to his influence she was forced to lead this double life, to sell her valuables and replace them by spurious substitutes; that she was weary and tired of the deception, and was almost glad that it had come to an end; that she would not be sorry to go away and hide her head from everybody.” “Did she tell you that this so-called Archie Brookes was an impostor, that he is nephew to neither her nor her confederate in the fraud, that infamous scoundrel, George Clayton-Brookes?” Yes, Mrs. Morrice had told her that, but had said very little on the subject, only narrating the bare fact that the secret had been discovered. “Did you urge her to tell you who the man really was?” “In a rather feeble way, yes,” was the girl’s answer, “for in her heart-broken state it occurred to me that she might be more ready to confess her secrets to one of her own sex than to a man. But she evaded what little attempts I made in that direction. And to tell you the truth, dear uncle, she was so overwrought and seemed so near the verge of an utter collapse that I had not the heart to persevere.” The face which had maintained its hard expression for so long softened as he looked at the pretty girl, whose compassionate soul shone through her beautiful eyes, now dimmed with tears. He laid his hand very kindly on her shoulder. “Ah, my little Rosabelle, your heart will ever guide that pretty little head of yours. Well, I would rather it were so. Men have to be hard, but we don’t want our women to lose their softness. And tell me, you do not, you cannot blame me for what I have done? You do not think I could have endured her presence in the house after I had discovered her two acts of treachery, the motives of one of which have yet to be found?”