Sir Paul did feel himself aggrieved at this. He thought that, as Ida's father, he should have been told everything bearing upon the connection between the two men, and he considered that there had been some intention to deceive him on the part of Penlyn. In his joy at the prospect of his daughter's renewed happiness he was very willing to forgive Penlyn, but still he could not help mentioning his errors, as he considered them. "Remember the letter from his brother, papa! It contained his solemn injunctions--rendered doubly solemn by the awful fate that overtook him on the very night he wrote them! How could he confide the secret to any one after that?" Her father made no answer to this question, not knowing what to say. After all, he acknowledged that had he been made the custodian of such a secret, had he had such solemn injunctions laid on him as Cundall had laid on his brother, he would have tried to keep them equally well. Honestly, he could not tell himself that Penlyn should have broken the solemn command imposed upon him; the command issued by a man who, as he gave it, was standing at the gate of the grave. So, when Penlyn paid his next visit to Belmont, there was a very different meeting between him and its inmates from the meetings that had gone before. Sir Paul took him by the hand, and told him that he was sincerely happy in knowing that once more he and Ida were thoroughly united, and then he went into her. Not a moment elapsed before she was folded to his heart and he had kissed her again and again, not a moment before she was beseeching him to forgive her for the injurious thoughts and suspicions she had let come into her mind. "Hush, Ida hush, my darling!" he said, as he tried to soothe her; "it is not you who should ask for forgiveness, but I. Not because I kept my brother's secret from you, but because of the brutal way in which I cast you off, simply for your doubting me for one moment. Oh, Ida, my own, say that you forgive me." "I have nothing to forgive," she said; "the fault was mine. I should never have doubted you." And so once more they were united, united never more to part. And since everything was now known to Ida, her future husband was able to talk freely to her, to tell her other things that had transpired of late, and especially of, what seemed to him, the strange behaviour of the Señor, and the accusation he had brought against him of shielding the murderer in his house. "Oh, Gervase!" Ida exclaimed, "why is it that every one should be so unjust to you? Was it not enough that I should have suspected you--though only for a moment in my grief and delirium--without this man doing so in another manner. It is monstrous, monstrous!" "Your suspicions," he answered, "were natural enough. You had had your mind disturbed by that strange dream, and, when you heard of my relationship to Cundall, it was natural that your thoughts should take the turn they did. But I cannot understand Guffanta, nor what he means."