'Tell me more another time,' she said, with a sigh. 'Come back to the case--the robbery. Is anything discovered yet?' 'I have heard nothing. George refuses to go on with the case out of some scruple because----' 'Oh! I know the cause. Very cruel things have been said about him. Do you not intend to stand by your own partner, Mr. Dering?' 'To stand by him? Why, what can I do?' 'You know what has been said of him--what is said of him--why I have had to leave home----' 'I know what is said, certainly. It matters nothing what is said. The only important thing is to find out--and that they cannot do.' 'They want to connect Edmund Gray with the forgeries, and they are trying the wrong way. Checkley is not the connecting link--nor is George.' 'You talk in riddles, child.' 'Perhaps. Do you think, yourself, that George has had anything whatever to do with the business?' 'If you put it so, I do not. If you ask me what I have a right to think--it is that everything is possible.' 'That is what you said about Athelstan. Yet now his innocence is established.' 'That is to say, his guilt is not proved. Find me the man who forged that cheque, and I will acknowledge that he is innocent. Until then, he is as guilty as the other man--Checkley--who was also named in connection with the matter. Mind, I say, I do not believe that my Partner could do this thing. I will tell him so. I have told him so. If it had to be done over again, I would ask him to become my partner. But all things are possible. My brother is hot upon it. Well--let him search as he pleases. In such a case the solution is always the simplest and the most unexpected. I told him only this morning--he had lunch with me--that he was on a wrong scent--but he is obstinate. Let him go on.' 'Yes--let him divide a family--keep up bitterness between mother and son--make a lifelong separation between those who ought to love each other most---- Oh! it is shameful! It is shameful! And you make no effort--none at all--to stop it.' 'What can I do? What can I say, more than I have said? If they would only not accuse each other--but find out something!' 'Mr. Dering--forgive me--what I am going to say'--she began with jerks. 'The honour of my brother--of my lover--are at stake.' 'Say, child, what you please.' 'I think that perhaps'--she did not dare to look at him--'if you could remember sometimes those dropped and forgotten evenings--those hours when you do not know what you have said and done--if you could only remember a little--we might find out more.' He watched her face blushing, and her eyes confused, and her voice stammering, and he saw that there was something behind--something that she hinted, but would not or could not express. He sat upright, suspicious and disquieted. 'Tell me what you mean, child.'