"You forget, George: you were travelling, and could not be written to." "Well, there was Emma," returned Mr. George, half confounded when thus confuted by his own sins. "I did not want to give too much confidence to Emma and her husband: I have told you why. And I would have gone into Mr. Castlemaine's house, George, the opportunity offering, though I had been the richest woman in the world. But for being there, I should not have known that Mr. Castlemaine holds secret possession of Anthony's diamond ring. You remember that ring, George." "I remember I used jokingly to say I would steal it from him--it was so beautiful. The possession of the ring is the most damaging proof of all against my Uncle James. And yet not a certain proof." "Not a certain proof!" "No: for it is possible that he may have picked it up in the Friar's Keep." "Then why should he not have shown the ring? An innocent man would have done so at once, and--here comes the preventive-man," broke off Madame Guise, her quick sight detecting the officer at some distance. "Let us go down the bill again, George." They crossed the waste land to the road, and went towards the hill. George North was lost in thought. "There is something about it almost incomprehensible," he said aloud: "and for my own part, Charlotte, I must avow that I cannot yet believe the Uncle James to be guilty. The Castlemaines are recognised in their own land here as mirrors of honour. I have heard my father say so many a time. And this is so dreadful a crime to suspect anybody of! I think I saw the uncle to-day." "Where?" she asked. And Mr. North explained the appearance of the gentleman that morning at the Turk's Head, whose carriage bore the Castlemaine crest. "Oh, yes, that was Mr. Castlemaine," she said, recognising him by the description. "Well, he does not look like a man who would do a dreadful deed, Charlotte. He has a very attractive, handsome face: and I think a good face. Shall I tell you why I have more particularly faith in his innocence?--Because he is so like my father." "And I have never doubted his guilt. You must admit, George, that appearances are strongly against him." "Undoubtedly they are. And a sad thing it is to have to say it of one of the family. Do you see much of the younger brother--the Uncle Peter?" "But he is dead," returned Charlotte. "The Uncle Peter dead!" "He died the very night that Anthony was lost: the mourning you saw Mrs. Castlemaine wearing was for him; Ethel and the little girl have gone into slighter mourning. And Madame Guise proceeded to give a brief history of Mr. Peter Castlemaine's death and the circumstances surrounding it, with the entrance of Mary Ursula to the Grey Nunnery. He listened in silence; just remarking that he had wondered in the morning which of his two uncles it was that he saw, and had felt half inclined to inquire of the waiter, but prudence kept him from it.