Had the ground opened at Edward Hazeldine's feet he could not have been more startled and astounded. He knew not what to say, where to look, what to do. Had his carefully-guarded secret, which he had flattered himself was known but to four people, or, at the outside, to five, become public property? If not, how had Miss Winterton become possessed of it? But these were vain questions, and what he had now to consider was the answer it behoved him to give to Miss Winterton. A moment later he had made up his mind. There should be no more double-dealing, or fencing with the truth on his part; he had suffered enough from that sort of thing already. "Yes, I am aware of it," he said, with the desperate calmness of a man who finds himself in a position from which he sees no way of escape. "I have known it from the first. But I am a moral coward, Miss Winterton, and the consequences of telling the world what I knew would have been so grievous to me and mine that I had not the courage to avow the truth. You are right. I had no justification in speaking to you as I did. I can only crave your forgiveness for my offence, and assure you that you need have no fear of a repetition of it." He raised his hat, made a more profound bow than ever he had made in his life, and then turning on his heel, he strode slowly back towards the house. On previous occasions when he had dined at the Lodge it had nearly always been his lot to take down Miss Winterton, but to-day it was a relief to him to find himself relegated to Mrs. Wiggins, the wife of the family lawyer, to whom he paid as much attention during the progress of the meal as the somewhat confused State of his faculties would allow of his doing. CHAPTER XXXI. CLEMENT'S QUEST.