"As hard and cruel as ever," he said. "Not one word to me, not one word in my defence. And all the time I am the victim of a vile conspiracy--" "Conspiracy! Do you call vulgar theft a conspiracy?" "It was nothing else," David put in, eagerly. "A most extraordinary conspiracy. The kind of thing that you would not have deemed possible out of a book." "And who might this gentleman be?" Enid asked, haughtily. "A thousand pardons for my want of ceremony," David said. "If I had not been under the impression that we had met before I should never have presumed--" "Oh, a truce to this," Bell cried. "We are wasting time. The hour is not far distant, Enid, when you will ask my pardon. Meanwhile I am going up to the house, and you are going to take me there. Come what way, I don't sleep to-night until I have speech with your aunt." David had drawn a little aside. By a kind of instinct Ruth Gates followed him. A shaft of grey light glinted upon her cycle in the grass by the roadside. Enid and Bell were talking in vehement whispers--they seemed to be absolutely unconscious of anybody else but themselves. David could see the anger and scorn on the pale, high-bred face; he could see Bell gradually expanding as he brought all his strength and firm power of will to bear. "What will be the upshot of it?" Ruth asked, timidly. "Bell will conquer," David replied. "He always does, you know." "I am afraid you don't take my meaning, Mr. Steel." David looked down into the sweet, troubled face of his companion, and thence away to the vivid crimson patches beyond the dark belt of foliage. Ever and anon the intense stillness of the night was broken by the long-drawn howl of one of the hounds. David remembered it for years afterwards; it formed the most realistic chapter of one of his most popular novels. "Heaven only knows," he said. "I have been dragged into this business, but what it means I know no more than a child. I am mixed up in it, and Bell is mixed up in it, and so are you. Why we shall perhaps know some day." "You are not angry with me?" "Why, no. Only you might have had a little more confidence in me." "Mr. Steel, we dared not. We wanted your advice, and nothing more. Even now I am afraid I am saying too much. There is a withering blight over yonder house that is beyond mere words. And twice gallant gentlemen have come forward to our assistance. Both of them are dead. And if we had dragged you, a total stranger, into the arena, we should morally have murdered you." "Am I not within the charmed circle now?" David smiled. "Not of our free will," Ruth said, eagerly. "You came into the tangle with Hatherly Bell. Thank Heaven you have an ally like that. And yet I am filled with shame--" "My dear young lady, what have you to be ashamed of?"