"Appleby at one time thought I was Verrall. Oh, I assure you there were wheels within wheels at work there. Of course there had to be, to carry on such a concern as that. It is so still. Verrall, you know, could not be made the scapegoat, he takes care of that--besides, it would blow the whole thing to pieces, if any evil fell upon him. It fell upon me, and I had to suffer for it, and abroad I went. I did not grumble; it would have been of no use: had I stayed at home and braved it out, I should have been _sent_ abroad, I suppose, at her Majesty's cost----" Charlotte interrupted, in a terrible passion. "Have you no sense of humiliation, Rodolf Pain, that you tell these strange stories? Mr. George Godolphin, I pray you do not listen to him!" "I am safe," replied George. "Pain can say what he pleases. It is safe with me." "As to humiliation, that does not fall so much to my share as it does to another's, in the light I look at it. I was not the principal; I was only the scapegoat; principals rarely are made the scapegoats in that sort of business. Let it go, I say. I took the punishment without a word. But, now that the man's dead, and I can come home with safety, I want to know why I was not sent for?" "I don't believe the man's dead," observed Charlotte. "I am quite sure that he is dead," said Rodolf Pain. "I was told it from a sure and certain source, some one who came out there, and who used to know Appleby. He said the death was in the _Times_, and he knew it for a fact besides." "Appleby? Appleby?" mused George, his thoughts going back to a long-past morning, when he had been an unseen witness to Charlotte's interview with a gentleman giving that name--who had previously accosted him in the porch at Ashlydyat, mistaking it for the residence of Mr. Verrall. "I remember his coming down here once." "I remember it too," said Rodolf Pain, significantly, "and the passion it put Verrall into. Verrall thought his address, down here, had oozed out through my carelessness. The trouble that we had with that Appleby, first and last! It went on for years. The bother was patched up at times, but only to break out again; and to send me into exile at last." "Does Verrall know of his death?" inquired George of Rodolf. "There's not a doubt that he must know of it. And Charlotte says she won't ask Verrall, and won't tell him I am here! My belief is that she knows Appleby's dead." Charlotte had resumed her walk under the archway: pacing there--as was remarked before--like a restrained tiger. She took no notice of Rodolf's last speech. "Why not tell Verrall yourself that you are here?" was George's sensible question.