“It is what I understand,” I said quietly. “Of whose sin, in the first instance? Mr Pugsley, who was my father?” He was very much upset. His hands on the paper shook like leaves. “What has happened?” he said. “Why are you asking me these questions?” “Let it be enough, sir, that I am asking them.” “Well, I don’t know.” “Think again, sir.” “Do you doubt my honour, young man? I tell you I don’t know.” “Where did it happen? You hail from Clapham, I believe. Was it there?” “Yes, if you will ask.” “Where is Clapham?” “It is a suburb of London.” “And she came under your administrations there--officially, I suppose.” He rallied a little, struggling to assert himself. “Do you bear in mind, Gaskett, of whom you speak--who it is whose errors--whose long-repented errors--you are probing?” “The repentance came too late for me, sir; and, in any case, if it is religion, it is not reason to make me its scapegoat.” “You were a child of wrath--a pledge of sinfulness foregone.” “I see--a sort of whipping-boy to Grace. But I have ceased to be a boy--there’s the devil of it, Mr Pugsley. If _you_ don’t know who my father was, does Lord Skene know?” He shook his head, with an odd little gasp. I saw him making for the pill-box again. “What!” cried I. “Did he, too, accept me as a pledge?” Something in his face enlightened me. The man was too shallow to hide a guilty self-consciousness. “Did he?” I said sharply; “or was he never told perhaps that there was any question of sinfulness?” I could see him hesitate, and it decided me. “Was Lord Skene told?” I said, and took a step towards him. “Was he told?” I read the answer in his perturbed eyes. “Is this how you reconcile your conscience with your interests?” I cried scornfully. Having yielded, like a weak creature, to resolution, he took refuge, like a woman, in personal grievance. He rose, quivering all over. “How dare you come and bully me like this!” he cried. “What instigated you to it, I say?” “A desire for the truth, sir. I understood parsons made a speciality of it.” “Not at all,” he retorted angrily--“at least there are truths and truths. To withhold some for a worthy purpose is not to lie.” “Yes,” I said. “I have read about that; but I never knew till now it was a principle of Evangelicism.” He looked at me balefully. “And, in any case, what was the worthy purpose here?” I asked.