"When you find," said his father, with deliberation, "two people wandering from town to town, without any visible means of subsistence, you naturally wonder how they manage to live. Very well. But now, if you discover they have a pretty knack of falling in with this or that rich young gentleman, and allowing him to pay for them on all occasions, isn’t the mystery partly solved? I am informed that these two people and yourself have been in the habit for a considerable time back of dining together in the evening—indeed, I have the name of the restaurant. Now I wish to ask you this question point-blank: is it not the fact that in every case you have paid?" Vincent did not answer; he was not thinking of himself at all; nor yet of the direct question that had been put to him. A terrible wave of bewilderment had passed over him; his heart seemed to have within it but one sudden cry—’Maisrie—Maisrie—why were you driving—with that stranger?’—and all the world grew black with a horror of doubt and despair. He thought of the young man driving along the King’s Road in Brighton: was there another paying for those two now?—had they another friend now to accompany them every evening? And Maisrie? But all this wild agony lasted only a moment. He cast this palsy of the brain behind him. His better self rose confident and triumphant—though there was still a strange look left in his eyes. "Paid?" he said, with a kind of scornful impatience. "Who paid? Oh, I did—mostly. What about that? That is nothing—a few shillings—I found it pleasanter not to have to settle bills before a young lady; and of course she did not know who paid; I made an arrangement——" "An arrangement by which you gave those people their dinner for nothing for months and months!" "And what then?" For Vincent had entirely recovered his self-command: he affected to regard this story that had been told him as quite unworthy of serious attention. It was his father who was growing exasperated.