As for these repeated allegations that old George Bethune was nothing less than a mendicant impostor, what did that matter to him? Even if these charges could be substantiated, how was that to affect Maisrie or himself? No association could sully that pure soul. Perhaps it was the case that Mr. Bethune was not over-scrupulous and careful about money matters; many otherwise excellent persons had been of like habit. The band of private inquiry agents had amongst them discovered that the old man had allowed Vincent to pay the bill at the various restaurants they frequented. Well, that was true. Among the vague insinuations and assumptions that had been pieced together to form an indictment, here was one bit of solid fact. And what of it? Of what importance were those few trumpery shillings? It was of little moment which paid: here was an arrangement, become a habit, that had a certain convenience. And Vincent was proud to set against that, or against any conclusions that might be drawn from that, the incident of old George Bethune’s stopping the poor woman in Hyde Park, and handing over to her all he possessed—sovereigns, shillings, and pence—so that he did not even leave himself the wherewithal to buy a biscuit for his mid-day meal. Perhaps there were more sides to George Bethune’s character than were likely to occur to the imagination of Messrs. Harland Harris, Morris, and Company? The white moon sailed slowly over to the west; the house was still; the night outside silent; but there was no peace for him at all. If only he could get to see Maisrie—for the briefest moment—that he might demand the reason of her sudden flight! Was it some over-strung sensitiveness of spirit? Did she fear that no one would understand this carelessness of her grandfather about money-matters; and that she might be suspected of complicity, of acquiescence, in certain doubtful ways? Was that the cause of her strange sadness, her resignation, her hopelessness? Was that why she had spoken of her ’degradation’—why she had declared she could never be his wife—why she had begged him piteously to go away, and leave this bygone friendship to be a memory and nothing more? ’Can you not understand, Vincent!’ she had said to him, in heart-breaking accents, as though she could not bring herself to the brutality of plainer speech. Well, he understood this at all events: that in whatever circumstances Maisrie Bethune may have been placed, no contamination had touched _her_; white as the white moonlight out there was that pure soul; he had read her eyes. The next morning Lord Musselburgh was out walking in the King’s Road with the fair young widow who hoped soon to be re-transformed into a wife.