"I don't despise you, Robert; I pity you from the bottom of my soul," said Yeldham in a hard dry voice. "I don't think, much as I have heard it talked of, that I ever believed in what men call the power of passion before. That it made whole idiots of the half-brained people who chose to let it get the mastery of them, I understood; but that under its influence you should have permitted yourself to have your sense of right and wrong warped and degraded--that you should have suffered yourself to become a conspirator with, if not the tool of, such a thorough-paced scoundrel as old Guyon, is to me most marvellous. I confess I thought there was something queer in the case; but I never dreamed of this." Yeldham stopped speaking for a minute; but as Robert Streightley remained silent, his head buried in his hands, Charley rose to his feet and began striding up and down the room, as was his fashion when very much excited. "I should be no true friend to you, Streightley, if I did not tell you all I feel in this matter," he said, "though I cannot express in strong enough terms my horror at what has been done. When I recollect how that poor fellow Gordon Frere went away almost heart-broken, and soured in temper, at the way in which he thought he had been treated by Miss Guyon--his visits unacknowledged, his letters unreplied to, his proposal rejected,--when I think how he stormed about her conduct and cursed her--yes, cursed her, poor girl, as a heartless coquette; cursed her for what it now appears she not merely had nothing to do with, but was a fellow-victim in,--when I think of all this, I feel I must be drunk or dreaming when connecting my old friend Robert Streightley with such a deliberate piece of villainy! Don't start, Robert; it was a hard word, but it was the right one. I'm not a friend of yesterday; we've been like brothers since we were boys, and you know I'd give my life for you if it were wanted; but I claim the right to speak out plainly in this matter. Why, it was but the other day that Frere, who, thank God, came home quite cured of all that early romance, was here talking of you and your wife, and saying how lucky she was to have chosen for her helpmate in life such an honest, genuine, sterling good fellow." "Charley," pleaded Streightley, crossing his hands behind his head, "for heaven's sake spare me this! To know what I was, what I seem to be, and what I am, is too much!" "There then," said Yeldham, pausing by his friend and laying his hand on Robert's shoulder--"I've done. No talk will mend the matter, and besides, immediate action is needed. You say Mrs. Streightley had left your house?" "She had; that letter came by the post the day after her father's death--the day on which she went away." "And at present you have no clue to her whereabouts?" "Not the slightest." Charles Yeldham sat down at his desk, and leaning his head on his hands, remained for a minute or two in deep thought. Then he turned to his friend and said: