The young man leant forward on the table and buried his head in his hands, as he said: "Poor Ida! poor Ida! Why should this trouble also come to you? And why need I have added to your unhappiness by my cruelty?" Then he looked up and said to Sir Paul: "When will she be well enough for me to go to her and plead for pardon? Will it be soon, do you think?" "I do not know," the other answered sadly. "But if, when the delirium has left her, I can tell her that you love her still and regret your words, it may go far towards her recovery." "Tell her that," Penlyn said, "and that my love is as deep and true as ever, and that, at the first moment she is in a fit condition to hear it, I will, myself, come and tell her so with my own lips. And also tell her that, never again, will I by word or deed cause her one moment's pain." "I am glad to hear you speak like this," Sir Paul said, "glad to find that I had not allowed my darling to give herself to a man who would cast her off because she, for one moment, harboured an unworthy suspicion of him." "This unhappy misunderstanding has been the one blot upon our love," Penlyn said; "if I can help it, there shall never be another." As he spoke these words, Sir Paul put his hand kindly on his shoulder, and Penlyn knew that, in him, he had one who would faithfully carry his message of love to the woman who was the hope of his life. "And now," Sir Paul said, "I want you to give me full particulars of everything that has occurred since that miserable night. I want to know everything fully, and from your lips. What Ida has been able to tell me has been sadly incoherent." Then, once more--as he had had now so often to go over the sad history to others, with but little fresh information added to each recital--Lord Penlyn told Sir Paul everything that he knew, and of the strange manner in which the Señor Guffanta had come into the matter, as well as his apparent certainty of eventually finding the murderer. "You do not think it is a bold ruse to throw off suspicion from himself?" Sir Paul asked. "A daring man, such as he seems to be, might adopt such a plan." "No," the other answered, "I do not. There is something about the man, stranger as he is, that not only makes me feel certain that he is perfectly truthful in what he says, and that he really does possess some strange knowledge of the assassin that will enable him to find that man at last, but also makes the others feel equally certain." "They all believe in him, you say?" Sir Paul asked thoughtfully. "All! That is, all but Philip Smerdon, who is the only one who has not seen him. And I am sure that, if he too saw him and heard him, he would believe." "Philip Smerdon is a thorough man of the world," Sir Paul said, "I should be inclined to give weight to his judgment." "I am sure that he is wrong in this case, and that when he sees Guffanta, he will acknowledge himself to be so. No one who has seen him can doubt his earnestness."