"Of course you have seen Meynell?" Stephen repeated. "No, I haven't." "I should have thought that was your first duty." "It was not easy to decide what my duty was," said Barron, with the same emphasis, "not at all easy." "What do you mean, father? There seems to be something more behind. If there is, considering my feeling for Hester, it seems to me that having told me so much you are bound to tell me _all_ you know. Remember--this story concerns the girl I love!" Passion and pain spoke in the young man's voice. His father looked at him with an involuntary sympathy. "I know. I am very sorry for you. But it concerns other people also." "What is known of the father?" said Stephen abruptly. "Ah, that is the point!" said Barron, making an abstracted face. "It is a question to which I am surely entitled to have an answer!" "I am not sure that I can give it you. I can tell you of course what the view of Judith Sabin was--what the facts seem to point to. But--in any case, whether I believe Judith Sabin or no, I should not have said a word to you on the subject but for the circumstance that--unfortunately--there are other people in the case." Whereupon--watching his son carefully--Barron repeated the story that he had already given to Flaxman. The effect upon Meynell's young disciple and worshipper may be imagined. He grew deadly pale, and then red; choked with indignant scorn; and could scarcely bring himself to listen at all, after he had once gathered the real gist of what his father was saying. Yet, by this time, the story was much better worth listening to than it had been when Barron had first presented it to Flaxman. By dint of much brooding, and under the influence of an angry obstinacy which must have its prey, Barron had made it a good deal more plausible than it had been to begin with, and would no doubt make it more plausible still. He had brought in by now a variety of small local observations bearing on the relations between the three figures in the drama--Hester, Alice Puttenham, Meynell--which Stephen must and did often recognize as true and telling. It was true that there was much friction and difference between Hester and the Fox-Wilton family; that Alice Puttenham's position and personality had always teased the curiosity of the neighbourhood; that the terms of Sir Ralph's will were perplexing; and that Meynell was Hester's guardian in a special sense, a fact for which there was no obvious explanation. It was true also that there emerged at times a singular likeness in Hester's beauty--a likeness of expression and gesture--to the blunt and powerful aspect of the Rector....