The young creatures, looking in each other’s eyes, listened for raised voices and the slam of prompt expulsion; but the voices were pitched too low to reach their ears in words, and were only interrupted by the sound of footsteps in the hall, and the perfectly passive closing of an outer and an inner door in quick succession. “He’s taken him into the dining-room,” murmured Phillida. “Who can it be?” “Hasn’t he any friends?” “None who ever come here; none of that name anywhere, I feel sure.” Her great eyes, without leaving his for an instant, filled with thought as a blank screen takes a shadow. “I wonder if it’s about that!” she whispered. “What?” “What they were calling out with the newspapers while we were at table.” There was a pause. The look in her eyes had changed. It was purely penetrating now. “Why should it be?” asked Pocket, his own eyes falling. “It’s no use asking me, Mr. Upton.” “But I don’t understand the question.” “Is that true?” “No,” he muttered; “it isn’t.” She was leaning over to him; he felt it, without looking up. “Mr. Upton,” she said, speaking quickly in the undertone they were both instinctively adopting, “you know now what I thought about you at first. I won’t say what made me; but that was what I thought, but could hardly believe, and never will again. It makes it all the more a mystery, your being here. I can’t ask my uncle—he tells me nothing—but there’s something I can and must ask you.” Pocket hung his head. He knew what was coming. It came. “My uncle brought you here, Mr. Upton, on the very morning that thing happened they were calling out about to-day. In the Park. It is to the Park he goes so often in the early morning with his camera! How can I say what I want to say? But, if you think, you will see that everything points to it; especially the way he ran out for that paper—and hid the truth when he came in!” Pocket looked up at last. “I know the truth.” “About the arrest?” “Yes; it was quite obvious, and he admitted it when you’d gone.” “Why not before?” “I couldn’t tax him about it in front of you,” he muttered, looking up and down quickly, unable to face her fierce excitement. “Do tell me what it is you both know about this dreadful case!” “I can’t,” the boy said hoarsely; “don’t ask me.” “Then you know who did it. I can see you do.” There was a new anguish even in her whisper; he could hear what she thought. “It was nobody you care about,” he mumbled, hoarser than before, and his head lower. “You don’t mean——” She stopped aghast. “I can’t say another word—and you won’t say another to me!” he added, a bitter break in his muffled voice. He longed to tell her it had been an accident, to tell her all; but he had given his word to Baumgartner not to confide in her, and he did not think that he had broken it yet. “You don’t know me,” she whispered, and for a moment her hand lay warm in his; “trust me! I’m your friend in spite of all you’ve said—or done!”