"That is impossible; that you can never say. Listen, Miles; I know more of this matter than you suspect. I know every detail of it. Your father made me his confidant, and I know the crime which your brother attempted." "You do?--the crime!" "The crime. The base, dastardly, hideous crime, which rendered it impossible for your father to do otherwise than renounce his son, and bid you renounce your brother for ever." "Ah, my God!" groaned Miles, burying his head in his hands. "There is no reason to be so excited, my poor boy," said Lord Sandilands, laying his hand gently on him. "You need tell Grace nothing of this; and be sure that this wretched Geoffrey will never trouble you again. He is most probably dead." "Dead!" shrieked Miles, raising his livid face and staring wildly at his friend. "He lives--here amongst us! I have seen him constantly; he has recognised me, I know. This man of whom we were just speaking,--this man whom you call Gilbert Lloyd,--is my younger brother, Geoffrey Challoner!" CHAPTER VIII. L'Homme propose. When a man of Lord Ticehurst's character and disposition makes up his mind to achieve a certain result--in the turf slang of the day, "goes in for a big thing"--he is not easily thwarted, or, at all events, he does not give up his idea without having tried to carry it through. The indiscreet, illiterate, but by no means bad-hearted, young nobleman aforenamed had given himself up, heart and soul, to a passion for the opera-singer known to him as Miss Grace Lambert, and had gone through a psychological examination of his feelings, so far as his brain-power permitted, with the view of seeing how the matter lay, and what would be his best means for securing his ends. The notion of succeeding dishonourably had never entered his head, or at least had not remained there for a moment. In that knowledge of the world which comes, no one knows how, to persons who are ignorant of everything else--that _savoir faire_ which is learned unconsciously, and which can never be systematically acquired--Lord Ticehurst was a proficient. He was not, as times go, an immoral man, certainly not a wicked one; but he lived in a loose set, and it did not arise from conscientious scruples that he had not "tried it on" that Grace Lambert should become his mistress. Such a result would have given him considerable _éclat_ amongst his friends, and his religious notions were not sufficiently developed to make him shrink from taking such a step. He did _not_ take it because he knew it would be useless; because he knew that any such offer would be ignominiously rejected; that he would be spurned from the door, and never permitted again to be in the society of the girl whom he really loved. There was only one way out of it--to offer her marriage. And then the question came, Did he really love her sufficiently for that, and was he prepared to stand the consequences?