"Yet I tell you, uncle," she reiterated with firmness at least equal to his own, "that Luke never killed that man, and that he pleads guilty to the crime in order to shield some one else." "Whom?" he retorted. "That I do not know--as yet. But that is the reason why I came here to-night, uncle: because you must help me to find out." Sir Thomas abruptly rose from his chair, and took his stand on the hearth rug, with legs apart, and slender hands buried in the pockets of his trousers, in the attitude dear to every Englishman. His eyes in their framework of innumerable wrinkles looked down, not unkindly, at the pale, serious face of the girl before him. He, who was accustomed to give every scrap of advice, every senseless piece of title-tattle its just meed of attention, was not likely to leave unheeded the calm assertions of a woman for whom he had great regard, and who was the daughter of a brother officer and one of his best friends. Of course the girl was in love with de Mountford, so her judgment on him was not likely to be wholly unbiassed: at the same time Sir Thomas--like all men who have knocked about the world a great deal, and seen much of its seamy side--had a great belief in woman's instinct, as apart from her judgment, and he was the last man in the world to hold the sex in contempt. "Look here, my dear," he said after a little while, during which he had tried to read the lines in the interesting face turned up toward him, "I honour you for your sense of loyalty to de Mountford, just the same as I honour your father for the like reason. And in order to prove to you that I, individually, would be only too happy to see the man's innocence established beyond a doubt, I am going to argue that soberly and sensibly with you. You hold the theory that Luke de Mountford is shielding some one from the consequences of an awful crime by taking the burden on himself. Now, my dear, as I told you before, people don't do that sort of thing nowadays. In olden times, the consequences of a crime--especially where the aristocracy was concerned--were quite picturesque: the Tower, the block, and all that sort of thing. But to-day the paraphernalia of vengeful justice is very sordid, very mean, and anything but glorious. It means the lengthy inquiry before a police magistrate, then the trial, the past dragged up to the light, the most private secrets thrown to the morbid curiosity of the million. In order to face that sort of thing, my dear, a man must be either guilty--then he cannot help it; or wrongfully accused--then he hopes for the establishment of his innocence. But a man does not prepare himself to face all that out of Quixotic motives alone, knowing himself to be innocent and because he desires that another should be spared those awful humiliations and the chance of a disgusting and shameful death." "What do you mean by all that, Uncle Ryder," she asked.