"Doomed to a felon's expiation. Think of it. A handsome, high-born, high-spirited, perhaps gifted lad, doomed to a felon's, a convict's fate! Can you not picture him, working in chains, clad in yellow, branded with shame----" Stella leaned against the door, and hid her face. "It is false--false!" she moaned; but she felt that it was true. "From that doom--one--one whom you have lashed with your scorn--stepped forward to save him." "You?" "I," he said--"even I!" She turned to him slightly. "You did this?" He inclined his head. "I did it," he repeated. "But for me he would be, at this moment, working out his sentence, the just sentence of the outraged law." Stella was silent, regarding him with eyes distended with horror. "And he--he knew it?" she murmured, brokenly. "No," he said. "He did not know it; he does not know it even now." Stella breathed a sigh, then shuddered as she remembered how the boy Frank had insulted and scorned this silent, inflexible man, who had saved him from a felon's fate. "He did not know it!" she said. "Forgive him!" He smiled a strange smile. "The lad is nothing to me," he said. "I have nothing to forgive. One does not feel angered at the attack of a gnat; one brushes the insect off, or lets it remain as the case may be. This lad is nothing to me. So far as he is concerned I might have allowed him to take his punishment. I saved him, not for his sake, but for another's." Stella leaned against the door. She was beginning to feel the meshes of the net that was drawing closer and closer around her. "For another," he continued, "I saved him for your sake." She moistened her parched lips and raised her eyes. "I--I am very grateful," she murmured. His face flushed slightly. "I did not seek your gratitude; I did not desire that you should even know that I had done this thing. Neither he nor you would ever have known it, but--but for this that has happened. It would have gone down with me into my grave--a secret. It would have done so, although you had refused me your love, although you should have given your heart to another. If"--and he paused--"if that other had been a man worthy of you." Stella's face flushed, and her eyes flashed, but she remembered all that he had done, and averted her gaze from him. "If that other had been one likely to have insured your happiness, I would have gone my way and remained silent; but it is not so. This man, this Lord Leycester, is one who will effect your ruin, one from whom I must--I will--save you. It is he who rendered this disclosure necessary." He was silent, and Stella stood, her eyes bent on the ground. Even yet she did not realize the power he held over her--over those she loved. "I am very grateful," she said at last. "I am fully sensible of all that you have done for us, and I am sorry that--that I should have spoken as I did, though"--and she raised her eyes with a sudden frank wistfulness--"I was much provoked."