There was the pitifulness of the whole thing! The utter purposelessness of a hideous crime. So many lives wrecked, such awful calamity, such appalling humiliation, such ignominy, and all just for nothing! A very little trouble, almost superficial inquiry, would have revealed the imposture, and saved all that sorrow, all the dire humiliation, and prevented the crime for which the law of men decrees that there shall be no pardon. The man who lay ill up stairs--and he who was lying in the public mortuary, surrounded by all the pomp and luxury which he had filched by his lies--alone could tell the secret of the extraordinary success of the imposture. Lord Radclyffe had accepted the bricklayer's son almost as his own, with that same obstinate reserve with which he had at first flouted the very thought of the man's pretensions. Who could tell what persuasion was used? what arguments? what threats? And the man was an impostor after all! And he had been murdered, when one word perhaps would have effaced him from the world as completely and less majestically than had been done by death. Mr. Warren talked of it all, and Louisa listened with half an ear even whilst every sense of hearing in her was concentrated on the floor above, in a vain endeavour to get a faint inkling of what went on in Lord Radclyffe's room. She had heard her uncle's step on the landing, the few hurried sentences exchanged with the doctor before entering the sick chamber, the opening and shutting of a door. Then again the lighter footsteps of the nurses, who had evidently been sent out of the room, when Sir Thomas went in. Louisa heard the faint hum of their voices as they descended the stairs, even a suppressed giggle now and then: they were happy no doubt at the few moments of respite from constant watching, which had apparently been accorded them. They ran quickly down the last flight of stairs, and across the hall toward the servants' quarters. Their chattering was heard faintly echoing through the baize doors. Then nothing more. Less than a quarter of an hour went by, and again she heard the opening and shutting of a door, and men's footsteps on the landing. Louisa could not believe either her eyes which were gazing on the clock, or her ears, which heard now quite distinctly the voice of Sir Thomas descending the stairs, and Doctor Newington's more pompous tones in reply. "The interview," remarked Mr. Warren, "did not last very long." But already she had risen from her chair, desperately anxious, wondering what the meaning could be of the shortness of the interview. She was not kept long in suspense, for a moment or two later Sir Thomas Ryder came in followed by Doctor Newington. One glance at her uncle's face told her the whole disappointing truth, even before he spoke.