And having arrived at this point Theodore Dalbrook saw himself face to face with a new and seemingly insurmountable difficulty. To follow this clue to the end, to bring the crime home to the husband of Lord Cheriton’s cast-off mistress, was to expose the history of the great man’s earlier years to the world at large, to offer up a reputation which had hitherto been stainless as a rich and savoury repast to that carrion brood—consisting of almost everybody—which loves to feast upon garbage. How the evening newspapers would revel in the details of such a story—what denunciations—what gloating over the weakness of a strong man’s life! How the contents bills would bristle with appetizing headings, how the shrill-voiced newsboys would yell their startling particulars, their latest developments of the Cheriton Chase Scandal! This must all inevitably follow upon the discovery of the murderer, if the murderer were indeed the injured husband. There could be no possible escape from that glare of publicity, that swelling symphony of slander. From the moment the law laid its hand upon the criminal the case would pass beyond individual control, and individual interests and reputations would become as nought. Justice would have to do its work, and in the doing of it must needs afford the usual fine opportunity to the newspapers. Theodore thought with horror of such humiliation coming upon Lord Cheriton, and through him upon Juanita, who loved her father with a reverential affection, and who was intensely proud of his character and position. He thought of gentle Lady Cheriton, who adored her husband, and who doubtless would be made miserable by the knowledge that his first love had been given to another woman, whom he had loved well enough to sacrifice honour for the sake of that illicit love. What agony to that single-minded, trusting creature to find that dark spot upon her husband’s past, and to know that the daughter’s happiness had been blighted because of the father’s sin! With these considerations in his mind it seemed to Theodore that it would be better to halt on the very threshold of discovery; and yet there was the appalling thought of further possibilities in the way of crime—of a madman’s revenge carried a stage further, a madman’s pistol aimed at the defenceless mother or the unconscious child. What was he to do? Was there no alternative between inaction and such action as must speedily set in motion the machinery of the law, and thus deprive him of all free will in the future conduct of the case?