Up to this moment Bram had believed this of Theodore; now for the first time it flashed through his mind that it was not true. However, he made a vague motion of the head which Theodore took for assent, and the latter went on. He seemed to have become suddenly possessed by a spirit of self-abasement, to feel the need of opening his heart. “There was no harm in my sending her to meet him--until--last night,” pursued the conscience-stricken man. “I know I did wrong in letting her go then!” Bram sat up in his chair with horror in his eyes. “You sent her? Begging, of course, as usual?” The words were harsh enough, brutal, perhaps, in the circumstances. But Bram’s feeling was too strong for him to be able to choose the expression of it. That this father, knowing what he did know, suspecting what he did suspect, should have sent his daughter to ask Christian for money was so shocking to his feelings that he was perforce frank to the utmost. “What could I do? How could I help it? One has got to live, Claire as well as I!” muttered Theodore, avoiding Bram’s eyes, and looking at the fire. “Besides, we don’t know anything. We may be doing her wrong in suspecting--what--what we did suspect,” said he earnestly, persuasively. “She never told me that she went away with him, never! I believe it’s a libel to say she did, the mere malicious invention of evilly-disposed persons to harm my child.” Bram was silent. These words chimed in so well with the hopes he would fain have cherished that, even from the lips of Mr. Biron, they pleased him in spite of his own judgment. Encouraged by the attitude which he was acute enough to perceive in his companion, Theodore went on-- “No, you may blame me as much as you like. You have more to blame me for than you know. I’m going to tell you all about it--yes, all about it.” And he began to play nervously with his handkerchief, and to dart at Bram a succession of quick, restless glances. “But I will hear nothing against my child. It’s not her fault that she’s the daughter of her father, is it? But she’s not a chip of the old block, as you know, Elshaw.” Bram, who was getting anxious about leaving Claire so long without medical attention, got up from his chair. He did not feel inclined to encourage the evident desire of Mr. Biron for the luxury of confession, of self-abasement. Like most vain persons, Theodore was almost as willing to excite attention by the record of his misdeeds as by any other way. And in the same way, when he felt inclined to write himself down a sinner, nothing would content him but to be the greatest sinner of them all. So he put up an imploring hand to detain Bram. “Wait,” he said petulantly. “Didn’t I say I had something to tell you? It’s something that concerns Claire, too.”