One other course was open to him. He had good hope of being able to dispose of the business of Melray Brothers before he was many weeks older. What if he were to go on till then and make no sign? With the turning over of the business to other hands his relations with Dyson, so far as the firm was concerned, would cease, and there would be no need ever to set eyes on him again were he minded not to do so. What if he were to keep his dark secret undivulged, unless it were to the criminal himself at their hour of parting, and allow his mother to live on for the rest of her days in happy ignorance of what, were it brought to her knowledge, might, perchance, prove well-nigh fatal to her? Yet it galled Robert Melray's strong sense of right and justice to think that a crime so flagrant should go wholly unpunished, even although the criminal were of his own flesh and blood. Willingly, then, did he accede to Dyson's written request for a ten-days' holiday on the plea of ill-health, which he found on his desk one morning shortly after his and Philip Winslade's interview with Mr. Dunning. For the time being he felt absolved from coming to a decision of any kind, and he breathed more freely in consequence. Fanny Sudlow was another inmate of Loudwater House whose mind was beset by doubts which refused either to allow themselves to be treated as if they were of no consequence, or to furnish any ground from which they might be developed into certainties. It was Phil's last briefly-worded epistle which had served to upset Fanny's equanimity. The strange discrepancy between Evan Wildash, as described by those who had known him, and the same person as described in Mrs. Melray's statement, was one which it baffled her to reconcile, even as it had baffled her lover. When she looked at Denia and asked herself whether it were possible that the foul demon of deceit could find lodgment in so fair a frame, she could but shake her head and tell herself that such a thing was very hard to believe. And yet there was Phil's letter! In her own despite, Fanny began to feel something of that sentiment of vague distrust which the elder Mrs. Melray avowed that her daughter-in-law had inspired her with from the first.