"Speak out frankly--frankly--I believe I shall understand; it will free your heart to speak. This influence which to a man should be the best--the best--what was it to you?" Bulstrode sat back and waited, and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some few seconds. Then Bulstrode put it: "For a young man, no matter how wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim:--for him to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for him to become a wanderer--there must be an extraordinary reason, almost an improbable one----" "I don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly. "I wish to do so. It would have been a simple matter to exculpate yourself--you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them. You took no means to clear yourself?" "None." Bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth--there was a certain distinction about him in his borrowed clothes. "Where is the woman now?" "She married my brother--she is Lady Waring--my name," tardily introduced the stranger, "is Cecil Waring." Bulstrode bowed. "Tell me something of her, in a word--in a word." "Well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very beautiful, and then very poor." "Yes," nodded Bulstrode. "She is like the rest of us--one of a fast wild set--a----" "A gambler?" Bulstrode helped the description. "She played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do--bridge." "Were you engaged to her, Waring?" "Yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him. "And did she believe you guilty?" "I think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could not have done so." "But she let you go under suspicion?" "Yes." "Without a word of good faith, of comfort?" "Yes." "Did she know of your embarrassments?" "Too well." "You tell me she was poor and--possibly she had embarrassments of her own?" "Possibly." Bulstrode came over to him. "Was she at the Christmas ball that night?" The young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had all left his face--he appeared fascinated--then he shook himself and unexpectedly laughed. "No," he said; "oh no." The older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly: "I understand!" He took a turn across the room. The few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of the modern lady in her furs and close hat. He stood and met the fire of her mocking eyes. "And you _believe_ him, Jimmy!" he could hear her say in her delicious voice. "Yes," he mentally told her, "I believe him." "You think that to save a woman's name and honor he has become an outcast on the face of the earth ... Jimmy!" He still gently replied to her: "Men who love, you know, have but one code--the woman and honor." Still mocking, but gentle as would have been the touch of the roses in the bowl near the photograph, her voice told him,