The Vicar looked at his son wonderingly. Was this a loyal regard for truth and justice, or was it the spirit of hatred and envy which moved the youth so strongly? The good, easy-going Vicar, full of charity for all the world, except a bad cook, could not bring himself all in a moment to think evil of his son. Nor was he ready to believe John Treverton the vilest of sinners. Yet here was John Treverton accused by the Vicar’s own son of an unpardonable fraud, and suspected of the darkest crime. ‘If you will tell your son to retire, we may discuss this business without prejudice or passion,’ said John. ‘But as long as he is present my lips are sealed.’ ‘I have no wish to remain a moment longer,’ answered Edward. ‘I hope Mrs. Treverton knows that I am ready to serve her with zeal and devotion, should she deign to demand my aid.’ ‘I know that you are my husband’s enemy,’ answered Laura, with freezing contempt, ‘and that is all I know or care to know about you.’ ‘That’s hard upon an old friend, Laura,’ remonstrated the Vicar, as Edward left the room. ‘Has he not dealt hardly by my husband?’ answered Laura, with a stifled sob. ‘Now, let us try and look this business in the face,’ said Mr. Sampson, seating himself quietly at the table and taking out his note-book. ‘According to your confession, Mr. Treverton, you had a wife living at the date of your first marriage with Miss Malcolm, December the thirty-first of the year before last. We have nothing to do with your second marriage--except so far, of course, as the lady’s honour is concerned. That second marriage can’t touch the property. Now I am sorry to tell you that if your marriage with the French dancer was a good marriage, you have no more right to be in this house, or to hold an acre of Jasper Treverton’s land, than the meanest hind in Hazlehurst.’ ‘I am ready to deliver up all I hold to-morrow. Let the hospital be founded. I acknowledge myself an impostor. Shameful as the act appears now that I contemplate it coldly, it seemed hardly a fraud when it first suggested itself to my mind. I saw a way of securing the estate to my cousin’s adopted daughter. I knew it had been his dearest wish that she should possess it. When I went through the ceremony of marriage with Laura Malcolm in Hazlehurst Church, I had but the faintest hope of ever being really her husband. When I made the post-nuptial settlement which was to secure to her the full enjoyment of the estate, I had no hope of ever sharing that estate with her. On my honour, as a man and a gentleman, it was for this dear girl’s sake I did these acts, and with no view to my own happiness or aggrandisement.’ Laura’s hand had been in his all the time he was speaking. Its warm grasp at the close of this speech told him that he was believed. ‘If you make these facts public, you beggar yourself and your wife,’ said Sampson.