Making a determined effort over himself, Lingard forced himself to return to the matter--the painful, the rather absurd matter--in hand. "I suppose you know all the circumstances," he began awkwardly. "The circumstances, General Lingard, are perfectly simple." The fingers of Mrs. Kaye's thin right hand plucked nervously at the buttons which fastened her black woollen bodice. "The lady in question is a married woman. She got hold of my boy, and she bewitched him into forgetting the meaning of what I thought he valued more than life itself--his honour." She rose up and stared down at Lingard, and there was a terrible look on her face. "Having amused herself for the best part of a year--having got from him all she wanted--she threw my son aside like a squeezed orange. His heart was broken, General Lingard. I cannot doubt he allowed himself to die. And it is to this woman that he desires I should give all that he has left me to remember him by----" Lingard had also risen to his feet. "You are bringing a very serious accusation," he said coldly, "against a lady for whom, as you yourself admit, Mrs. Kaye, your son entertained a great regard. Young men--forgive me for reminding you of what you must know as well as I--sometimes form strange, secret attachments which are, believe me, often as entirely unprovoked as--as--they are unrequited. I have known more than one such instance." She drew from her breast a piece of paper. "I ask you, nay, after what you have just said I implore you, to read what is written here----" She almost thrust it into his reluctant hand. "I don't wish to trouble you with my private concerns, but read this--read these lines," her shaking finger drew his troubled eyes to the words: "Do not be hurt, mother. You've never understood. In the sight of God Athena is my wife. She was nothing--she was never anything, to that wretched, cruel old man whose name she bears--and to whom she is so good when he allows her to be." Lingard read the words over twice very deliberately. Then he folded the letter, and handed it back to its owner. "This letter," he said firmly, "should be destroyed. I am sorry you showed it me, Mrs. Kaye. It was meant for no eyes but yours." "Ah!" she cried, and tears at last welled up into her eyes. "You blame my poor boy! But he told me nothing I did not already know----" She went to the fire and, stooping down, held the piece of paper over the tongues of shooting flame till he thought her hand must surely be scorched. She turned on him. "There! It's gone!" she exclaimed. "No one but you, General Lingard, and I, his mother, will ever know that my son wrote that letter. Perhaps I was wrong to have shown it to you. But what you said--but what you said"--she gave a hard, short sob--"hurt me, made me angry. I did not know how else to make you understand. And now, if you say I ought to do what my son asks, I will abide by your decision."