“Don’t cry, dear, _he_ never meant any harm; it was all one of those happens that you can’t guard against when you are trying experiments, that way. You see _I_ don’t cry. It’s because I know him so well. I could never look anybody in the face again if he had got into such an amazing condition as that a-purpose; but bless you his intention was pure and high, and that makes the _act_ pure, though it was higher than was necessary. We’re not humiliated, dear, he did it under a noble impulse and we don’t need to be ashamed. There, don’t cry any more, honey.” Thus, the old gentleman was useful to Sally, during several days, as an explanation of her tearfulness. She felt thankful to him for the shelter he was affording her, but often said to herself, “It’s a shame to let him see in my crying a reproach—as if he could ever do anything that could make me reproach him! But I can’t confess; I’ve got to go on using him for a pretext, he’s the only one I’ve got in the world, and I do need one so much.” As soon as Sellers was out again, and found that stacks of money had been placed in bank for him and Hawkins by the Yankee, he said, “_Now_ we’ll soon see who’s the Claimant and who’s the Authentic. I’ll just go over there and warm up that House of Lords.” During the next few days he and his wife were so busy with preparations for the voyage that Sally had all the privacy she needed, and all the chance to cry that was good for her. Then the old pair left for New York—and England. Sally had also had a chance to do another thing. That was, to make up her mind that life was not worth living upon the present terms. If she _must_ give up her impostor and die, doubtless she must submit; but might she not lay her whole case before some disinterested person, first, and see if there wasn’t perhaps some saving way out of the matter? She turned this idea over in her mind a good deal. In her first visit with Hawkins after her parents were gone, the talk fell upon Tracy, and she was impelled to set her case before the statesman and take his counsel. So she poured out her heart, and he listened with painful solicitude. She concluded, pleadingly, with— “_Don’t_ tell me he is an impostor. I suppose he is, but doesn’t it look to you as if he isn’t? You are cool, you know, and outside; and so, maybe it can look to you as if he isn’t one, when it can’t to me. _Doesn’t_ it look to you as if he isn’t? Couldn’t you—_can’t_ it look to you that way—for—for my sake?” The poor man was troubled, but he felt obliged to keep in the neighborhood of the truth. He fought around the present detail a little while, then gave it up and said he couldn’t really see his way to clearing Tracy. “No,” he said, “the truth is, he’s an impostor.” “That is, you—you feel a little certain, but not entirely—oh, not _entirely_, Mr. Hawkins!” “It’s a pity to have to say it—I do hate to say it, but I don’t think anything about it, I know he’s an impostor.”