“No? Perhaps he wasn’t very proud of it. Perhaps he realized that the rabbit fallacy wouldn’t carry him very far in a court of law. I fancy he imagined that I was poaching on his preserves.” Rotherby spoke with a sarcastic drawl. “Very unreasonable of him, what?” She felt the burning colour rise in her face under his eyes, and she averted her own. “Not being in his confidence, I really can hardly give an opinion,” she said. “Oh, you’re not in his confidence?” said Rotherby. “Somehow I didn’t think you were, or you would hardly be so ready to take up the cudgels in his defence. He’s a curious fellow. I knew him years ago. He had brains as a young man, then somehow he got touched in the upper story and got condemned to the simple life. That was how he came to take up farming. An awful blow to the old man, I believe! I heard he was never the same again afterwards. That is about as far as my information takes me. I must admit that from a personal point of view I am not vastly interested in the family. Did you find them interesting?” “They were kinder to me than I can possibly say,” Frances said. The careless information he had given her was like an obnoxious draught that she had been compelled to swallow. But somehow, in spite of herself, she had assimilated it. It explained so much which before had been inexplicable. She remembered how she had more than once asked herself if the lonely gladiator on that Devon moor were always wholly responsible for his actions. And was this why he had told her only that morning that it was no good—no good—that her love was nought but a handicap to be overcome and cast aside? Again she was conscious of the pain she had stifled waking within her. Again she felt the chill presence of the haunting spectre. Then Rotherby’s voice came to her again, and she turned almost with relief. “They were decent to you, were they?” he said. “I presume that was why you went back to them from Fordestown?” She thrust her pain away out of sight of his mocking eyes. “No,” she said quietly. “I went back to be with the little girl before she died. She wanted me.” He gave a slight start. “What? The blind child that used to run about the lane? Is she dead? What from?” “She was very fragile,” Frances said, and instinctively she spoke with reverence. “She had a fall which caused an abscess at the base of the brain, affecting the spine. The doctor had always known it might happen at any time. She didn’t suffer—dear little soul.” “A tragic family!” commented Rotherby, and dropped into silence. He leaned back in his chair with his face in shadow, and for a space she felt that his attention was no longer focussed upon her. It gave her a certain sense of relief, for her thoughts would turn back to those few cynical words of his and she needed time to recover from the shock of them. Was it true? Was it true? Was this the key to the riddle that had so often baffled her? Was it for this that she had seen him writhing in agony of soul?