"Stop, Charles," said Marston; "the case is too serious for banter of this kind. My dear boy," he added, kindly, "I am glad to see you angry, but nevertheless, you must condescend to explain. The longer you allow suspicion to rest on yourself the longer it will be before it falls on the right person. Come, what were you doing in the passage at that time of night?" Charles was touched, I could see. A very little kindness was too much for him. "It is no good, Marston," he said, in quite a different voice--"I am not believed in this house." He turned away and leaned against the mantle-piece, looking into the fire. Ralph cleared his throat once or twice, and then suddenly went up to him, and laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder. "Fire away, old boy!" he said, in a constrained tone, and he choked again. Charles turned round and faced his brother, with the saddest smile I ever saw. "Well, Ralph!" he said, "I will tell you everything, and then you can believe me or not, as you like. I have never told you a lie, have I?" "Not often," replied Ralph, unwillingly. "You at least are truth itself," said Charles, reddening; "and if you are biassed in your opinion of me, perhaps it is more the fault of that exemplary Christian, Aunt Mary, than your own. According to her, I have told lies enough to float a company or carry an election, and I never like to disappoint her expectations of me in that respect; but you I have never to my knowledge deceived, and I am not going to begin now." "You will be a clergyman yet," whispered the sick parent. "There is a good living in the family. Charles, I shall live to see the Reverend Charles Danvers in a surplice, preaching his first sermon on the ninth commandment." "At any rate, he is practising the fifth under difficulties at this moment," said Marston, as Charles winced and turned his back on the parental sick-bed. "Come, my boy, we are losing time." "Will somebody have the goodness to restrain Middleton if he gets excited?" said Charles. "I am afraid he won't like part of what I have got to say." "Nonsense, sir!" I replied, with warmth. "I hope I can restrain myself as well as any man, even under such provocation as I have lately received. You may depend on me, sir, that--" "We lose time," said Marston, seating himself by me, and cutting short what I was saying in an exceedingly brusque manner. "Come, Charles, you should not be interrupted." But he was. I interrupted him the whole time, in spite of continual efforts on the part of Marston to make me keep silence. I am not the man calmly to let pass black insinuations against the character of a friend. No, I stood up for him. I am glad to think how I stood up for him, not only metaphorically, but in the most literal sense of the term; for I found myself continually getting up, and Marston as often pulling me down again into my chair.