"No, he has not confessed anything," Di answered. Yet there was something in her tone and confused, anxious manner that made me sure she was not telling the truth. The conviction swept over me that something had happened at the house in Park Lane since I slammed the front door and ran out. Diana might have thought twice before coming to grovel here to Eagle, unless she had been sure that I was not jumping to conclusions--sure that there could be no possible mistake about _what I had found in Sidney's coat_. Suddenly I knew as well as if she had put the story into words that Sidney had come home before she had made up her mind what to do; that she had told him about the coat, and that I had carried it off to Eagle March; that Sidney, knowing well what my discovery must have been, had broken down and sent Diana to Eagle, in the one last hope that her pleading might save him from his enemy's revenge. "I haven't seen Sidney," she hurried on. "But--instinct tells me some things. I'm afraid--I know that his loving me so much made him cruel to you. Oh, don't look at me like that. You turn me to ice. It's true--'cruel' isn't a hard enough word for what he did. I don't try to excuse him. But he sinned for my sake. That softens my heart toward him. I'm human!" "I'm not inhuman, I trust," said Eagle, "but it doesn't soften _my_ heart toward him." "I don't ask that," Diana wept. "All I ask is your forgiveness for me--that you soften your heart for me!" "I forgive you freely, Lady Diana," Eagle answered, "for any injury you may have done me in the past, for I have lived it down. The injury Vandyke did me, I thought--till to-night--I could never live down. But thanks to the most loyal friend a man ever had I've been given my chance." Diana flung up her head, and there were no tears in her eyes. "Peggy a loyal friend!" she cried. "She's a traitor to Father and me when she betrays Sidney. What right has she to be loyal to you at our expense? And it isn't loyalty, not what _you_ mean by loyalty. She has always hated Sidney for your sake, and now she can calmly see him ruined, not because of any wish for justice, but simply because she's desperately, idiotically in love with you; because she'd do anything--no matter how cruel to others--in the hope of winning you for herself. Now you know the real truth about Peggy." "I wish I could think it were the real truth," said Eagle very quietly and very slowly. "To have Peggy's love would be the best thing in the world. I've realized that for some time now--while I was under arrest before my court-martial and had plenty of time to think. That was the time it was borne in on me, Lady Diana, just how much difference there is between you and Peggy." Diana stood speechless, staring at him. I was afraid the two out there might hear my heartbeats, they sounded so loudly in my own ears.