"I protested to Bennet," Eversleigh resumed, "that it was impossible for me to do this; my influence was not strong enough. And then he said he would tell Kitty everything, and leave my fate to her. He did tell her everything, and Kitty, to save me from prison, and you and the rest from ignominy, consented to marry him." Gilbert drew a deep breath. "So that is how it is?" he said, his voice full of pain. "She has sacrificed herself for us!" "It is very noble of her," said Eversleigh. "Noble, yes; it is heroic. But we have no right to expect such a sacrifice from her." "None whatever. Indeed, I told her so. I urged her to leave us to our fate; but she would not." Eversleigh looked at his son anxiously. The young man's face had a strange hopeless expression; but he had taken his father's statement much more quietly than the latter had anticipated. Gilbert made no frantic moan, the calamity of which he had just been apprised went far beyond anything of the kind. It now literally struck him dumb, both with surprise and grief. Kitty gone from him for ever! Kitty, his darling, his wife that was to be! And she had gone in order to save him and his father; and his father was a defaulter! "I must think over what you have told me, sir," he said at length, and went across to his chambers in the Temple. CHAPTER XXVI Gilbert Eversleigh walked out of his father's office, and finding an unoccupied bench in the neighbouring Lincoln's Inn Fields, sat down to ponder this terrible and altogether unexpected situation. First, he tried to grasp the facts which had just been thrust upon him, and to see them in all their bearings. There was no question now but he must relinquish all thoughts of Kitty Thornton. The sacrifice the girl was making for him and his father filled him with a feeling of worship of her into which there entered something sacred. In his mind he placed her on an altar, as it were, and could have fallen down before her in adoring homage of that lofty spirit of loyalty she had shown. Now that he knew all, he determined to write to thank her for what she had done. So far as he was concerned, it must be his part, he told himself, to make her sacrifice no harder. Therefore he must abide by her decision and accept it. Gilbert was a young man, with all the high hopes and the hot passions of youth, and it was not without the deepest pain that he thought of her and his vanished happiness. It was natural that he should first think of her and of his own loss. But once he accepted her decision, he resolved to lock away her image in his heart, and to cherish it there in secret. Having got himself into this frame of mind, he passed on to consider his father's position.