What a day that had been at the Red Court! Mr. Thornycroft had sat on the magisterial bench at Jutpoint, trying petty offenders, unconscious that there was a greater offender at his own house demanding punishment. Richard Thornycroft felt inclined to proclaim the truth and deliver himself up to justice. The remorse which had taken possession of him was greater than he knew how to bear; and it seemed that to expiate his offence at the criminal bar of his country, would be more tolerable than to let it thus prey upon him in silence, eating away his heart and his life. Consideration for his father and sister, for their honourable reputation, alone withheld him. He and Cyril had been fond brothers. Cyril, of delicate health and gentle manners, had been, as it were, the pet of the robust justice and his robust elder sons. The home, so far as Richard was concerned, must be broken up: he would go abroad, the farther distant the better. But for his sister, he had started that day. Something of this she told Mr. Hunter, in an outburst of her great suffering. "Oh, Robert! even allowing that he shall escape, what a secret it will be for me and my brother Isaac to carry through life!" "Time will soften it to you. You are both innocent." "Time will never soften it to me. My dear brother Cyril!--so loving to us all, so _good!_" Her hands were before her face as if she would conceal its tribulation from the dark night. Robert Hunter, who had been standing, drew her hands within his, sat down beside her on the narrow bench, and kept them there. "Time is wearing on, Mary Anne, and I must be at Jutpoint to-night. May I say what I came down from town to say? Though it pains me to enter upon it now you are in this grief." "What is it, Robert?" "You have not forgotten that there was a probability of my going abroad? Well, the arrangements are now concluded, and I start in the course of a few days. I did not think of being off before the summer, but it has been settled differently." "Yes. Well?" "This alters my position altogether in a pecuniary point of view, and I shall now rest at ease, the future assured. The climate is excellent; the residence out all that can be wished for. In a week from this I ought to take my departure." "Yes," she repeated, in the same tone of apathy as before. "What else? Make haste, Robert--I must begone; I am beginning to shiver. I have these shivering fits often now." "I want you to go with me, my love," he whispered, in an accent of deep tenderness. "I came down to urge it; but now that this unfortunate affair has been made known to me, I would doubly urge it. As my wife, you will forget----" "Be quiet, Robert!" she impetuously interrupted, "you cannot know what you are saying." "Yes, I do; I wish you to understand I may be away for five years." "So much the better. You and I, of all people in the world, must live apart. Was this what you had to say?"