For the first time throughout the interview something like satisfaction came into the old man’s face. The notion of escaping from the flouts and jeers of his acquaintances, and from their equally galling silence, was very welcome to him. ‘I thank you,’ he said, ‘with all my heart, Dennis.’ ‘There is only one condition, sir,’ hesitated the other. ‘I think the proposition would be more acceptable to—to Miss Margaret—if she did not know that she was accepting any hospitality of mine. You will be so good as to conceal from her that fact.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ assented the old man. He did not like to confess that Margaret was elsewhere; that she had been driven from his roof by his own insensate anger. His companion’s offer had touched him and turned the current of his thoughts from their accustomed groove—himself and his own affairs—into other channels. He recognised the patience and forbearance of this young fellow, and the temptation to unmask a rival which he had resisted and left to other hands to do. He was curious to know the full extent to which this self-sacrifice would have extended. ‘But suppose matters had gone still further, Dennis? If the play had been successful, and its genuineness acknowledged, and Margaret——?’ ‘It was not possible,’ broke in the other, with a flush. ‘No one could have read the “Vortigern”—I mean could have seen it acted,’ he added, hurriedly, ‘and believed it to be a play of William Shakespeare’s. I felt confident of that.’ ‘Still, some of us were deceived,’ insisted the antiquary, with a melancholy smile, ‘and why not more? Suppose the play had succeeded, the contingency on which, as you know, my niece’s marriage with this scoundrel depended, what would you have done then?’ ‘I should have still kept silence. I only suspected, remember. I was not quite sure. Moreover, Margaret herself might have been spared the knowledge of the truth, and it was not for me to undeceive her.’ ‘You would have permitted her, then, for a delicate scruple, to entrust her happiness to a scoundrel?’ ‘You press me hard, sir, though I do not say you have not a right to do so,’ replied Dennis, greatly agitated. ‘I have thought of this a thousand times; it has cost me days and nights of misery, Heaven knows. But on the whole I have satisfied my conscience. When one has lost all hope in a matter that has once concerned one to the uttermost, one takes a clear view of it. The young man of whom you speak has, doubtless, many faults; he is weak and vain, and greedy of applause, however gained; he is to some extent unprincipled, he has even committed a serious crime; but he is not altogether what you have called him, a scoundrel. He is not unkind; under less adverse circumstances than those in which, from the very first, he has been placed, he would have shown himself a better man. An exceptional temptation assailed him, and he succumbed to it. He would not necessarily—or I have tried to think so—have made a bad husband.’