"You are strange to venture to inquire into my motive," she said, with downcast eyes. Then her lip trembled, and she added in a low voice: "My motive is known only to the dead." "Ah, don't cry!" he almost shouted at her, with a sudden brand of red anger across his brow. "There's no need for tears! It shan't ever happen, this thing!" "What do you mean?" she asked, glancing tremulously at him. "What I say. This marriage can't happen. I'll see to that. But stop--perhaps I am talking too soon. 'Let not him boast that putteth his armor on as he that taketh it off.' Good-day, Miss Mordaunt. I shall not trouble you any more about the one hundred pounds. I will spend it out of my own pocket pocket--" "Please stay!" she cried after him. "Everything that you say bewilders me! How am I to believe you honest when you say such things?" "What things? Honest? You may believe me honest or not, just as you will. I told you before that I am not greatly concerned. If I bewilder _you_, you anger _me_." "I am sorry for that. But how so?" "What, is it nothing for a man to hear it doubted whether he is honest or not? And, apart from that, admit that your sister is not very long dead, and that you have been easily drawn into this engagement--" "But what can all this matter to you?" she asked, with a wrinkled brow. "Why should my private conduct anger you at all? I have not, in fact, as you think, been so easily won into this engagement; yet, if I had, it is amazing that you should lecture me. If it was any one but you, I should be cross." "What, am I in special favor, then?" "You have an honest face." "Then why is my poor honesty constantly doubted." "Because you say extraordinary things. It is not, for instance, usual for people to pay one hundred pounds for the benefit of a casual acquaintance as you just volunteered to do. Either you have some trick or motive in view, or you are very wonderfully disinterested." "Which do you think?" "I may think one thing now, and the other after you are gone." "Well, it is useless arguing. I should be here all day, if I let myself. We were not made to agree, you see. Some people are like that. I shall just pay the one hundred pounds out of my own pocket--" "You are not to do that, please." "Then, will you?" "I think not." "You have no idea what is in question!" "Then, give me some idea." "And lose more time. However, you may as well hear. It is this: that the tenant in the flat before me, one Miss L'Estrange, found concealed in a picture a certificate of a marriage and one of a birth, and I wish to buy them for you from Miss L'Estrange's servant, who has them." Violet sprang upright with an adoring face, murmuring: "Heaven be thanked!" "I didn't tell you before," said David, "because I haven't secured the papers yet. I have left the girl in my flat--" "But where--where do you say she found them?" she asked, with a keener interest than the question quite seemed to call for.