"For God's sake, Alcott, don't suppose from what I have been telling you that all the fault was on my wife's side, that I was a mere injured innocent. Very soon after we married, I discovered that I had ceased to love her, that there was hardly anything in common between us. And there was a woman in Paris--a married woman, of my own world--cultivated, and good, and refined--who was sorry for me, who made a kind of spiritual home for me. We very nearly stepped over the edge--we should have done--but for her religion. She was an ardent Catholic and her religion saved her. She left Paris suddenly, begging me as the last thing she would ever ask me, to be reconciled to Anna, and to forget her. For some days I intended to shoot myself. But, at last, as the only thing I could do for her, I did as she bade me. Anna and I, after a while, came together again, and I hoped for a child. Then, by hideous ill luck, Anna, about three months after our reconciliation, discovered a fragment of a letter--believed the very worst--made a horrible scene with me, and went off, as she has just told me,--not actually with Rocca as I believed, but to join him in Italy. From that day I lost all trace of her. Her concealment of the boy's birth was her vengeance upon me. She knew how passionately I had always wanted a son. But instead she punished him--the poor, poor babe!" There was an anguish in the stifled voice which made sympathy impertinent. Alcott asked some practical questions, and Buntingford repeated his wife's report of the boy's condition, and her account of an injury at birth, caused by the unskilful hands of an ignorant doctor. "But I shall see him to-morrow. Ramsay and I go together. Perhaps, after all, something can be done. I shall also make the first arrangements for the divorce." Alcott was silent a moment--hesitating in the dark. "You will make those arrangements immediately?" "Of course." "If she dies? She may die." "I would do nothing brutal--but--She came to make a bargain with me." "Yes--but if she dies--might you not have been glad to say, 'I forgive'?" The shy, clumsy man was shaken as he spoke, with the passion of his own faith. The darkness concealed it, as it concealed its effect on Buntingford. Buntingford made no direct reply, and presently they parted, Alcott engaging to send a messenger over to Beechmark early, with a report of the patient's condition, before Buntingford and Dr. Ramsay started for London. Buntingford walked on. And presently in the dim moonlight ahead he perceived Geoffrey French. The young man approached him timidly, almost expecting to be denounced as an intruder. Instead, Buntingford put an arm through his, and leaned upon him, at first in a pathetic silence that Geoffrey did not dare to break. Then gradually the story was told again, as much of it as was necessary, as much as Philip could bear. Geoffrey made very little comment, till through the trees they began to see the lights of Beechmark.