Sir John Pleydell leant back in his chair. ‘I have classified you,’ he said with a queer laugh. ‘Ah!’ answered Conyngham, suddenly uneasy. ‘Yes—as a fool.’ He leant forward with a deprecating gesture of his thin white hand. ‘Do not be offended,’ he said, ‘and do not reproach yourself for having given your case away. You never had a case, Mr. Conyngham. Chartists are not made of your material at all. As soon as you gave me your card in Madrid, I had a slight suspicion. I thought you were travelling under a false name. It was plain to the merest onlooker that you were not the man I sought. You are too easy-going, too much of a gentleman to be a Chartist. You are screening somebody else. You have played the part well, and with an admirable courage and fidelity. I wish my boy Alfred had had a few such friends as you. But you are a fool, Mr. Conyngham. No man on earth is worth the sacrifice that you have made.’ Conyngham slowly stirred his coffee. He was meditating. ‘You have pieced together a very pretty tale,’ he said at length. ‘Some new scheme to get me within the reach of the English law, no doubt.’ ‘It is a pretty tale—too pretty for practical life. And if you want proofs I will mention the fact that the Chartist meeting was at Chester-le-Street, not Durham; that my house stands in a hollow and not on a hill; that you could not possibly go to Durham _viâ_ Ravensworth, for they lie in opposite directions. No, Mr. Conyngham, you are not the man I seek. And, strange to say, I took a liking to you when I first saw you. I am no believer in instinct, or mutual sympathy, or any such sentimental nonsense. I do not believe in much, Mr. Conyngham, and not in human nature at all. I know too much about it for that. But there must have been something in that liking for you at first sight. I wish you no harm, Mr. Conyngham. I am like Balaam—I came to curse, and now stay to bless. Or, perhaps, I am more like Balaam’s companion and adviser—I bray too much.’ He sat back again with a queer smile. ‘You may go home to England to-morrow if you care to,’ he added, after a pause, ‘and if that affair is ever raked up against you I will be your counsel, if you will have me.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘You do not want to go home to England?’ suggested Sir John, whose ear was as quick as his eye. ‘No, I have affairs in Spain.’ ‘Or—perhaps a castle here. Beware of such—I once had one.’ And the cold grey face softened for an instant. It seemed at times as if there were after all a man behind that marble casing. ‘A man who can secure such a friendship as yours has proved itself to be,’ said Sir John after a short silence, ‘can scarcely be wholly bad. He may, as you say, have made a mistake. I promise nothing; but perhaps I will make no further attempts to find him.’ Conyngham was silent. To speak would have been to admit.