He told her in detail, and, while he told her, they stood, two pathetic figures in the mist and rain that dripped slowly and sadly from the eaves of the Dutch summerhouse. She stood, pressing her hands together, trying to comprehend. And he hid nothing: telling her even of the ten or twelve thousand that, did they possess it, would save them; telling her that which had decided him to bid her farewell—an item of news which had reached the bank on the previous evening, after Arthur had left for Garth. The great house of Poles, with a wide connection among country banks, had closed its doors; and not only that, but Williams’s, Ovington’s agents, had followed suit within six hours. The tidings had come by special messenger, but would be known in the town in the morning, and would certainly cause a panic and a run on both banks. That news had been the last straw, he said. It had pushed him to a decision. He had felt that he must give her back her word, and without the loss of a day must put it in her power to say that there was nothing between them. Once and again, as he told his tale, she put in a question, or uttered a pitying exclamation. But for the most part she listened in silence, controlling herself, suppressing the agitation which shook her. When he had done, she put a question, but it was one so irrelevant, so unexpected, so far from the mark, that it acted on him like a douche of cold water. “What have you done to your coat?” she asked. “My coat?” “Yes.” She pointed to his shoulder. He glanced down at his coat, but he felt the check. Surely the ways of women were strange, their manner of taking things past finding out. He explained, but he could not hide his chagrin. “I wasn’t thinking, and took the first that came to hand,” he said—“an old one. Does it matter?” But she continued to stare at it. He was wearing a riding coat, high in the collar, long in the skirts, shaped to the figure. On the light buff of the cloth a stain spread downwards from shoulder to breast. The right arm and cuff, too, were discolored, and it said much for the disorder of his thoughts that he had ridden from town without noticing it. She eyed the stain with distaste, with something like a shudder. “It is blood,” she said, “isn’t it?” He shrugged his shoulders, yet himself viewed it askance. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know how you knew. I wore it that night, you know. I did not mean to wear it again, but in my hurry——” “Do you mean the night that my father was hurt?” “Yes.” “You held him up in the carriage?” “Yes, but—” squinting at it—“I don’t think that it was done then. I believe it was done when I was picking him up in the road, Jos, before Bourdillon came. Indeed, I remember that your father noticed it—before he fainted, you know.” “My father noticed it?” “Well, oddly enough, he did.” “While you were supporting him?” There was a strange light in her eyes, and the blood had come back to her cheeks. “But where was Thomas—the man—then?”