“If I had been she never should have gone like that!” “What, not when everything had come out——” “No, not at all; she shouldn't have been kicked out, anyway. I'd have given her time and then driven her back to Melbourne, with all her things. What right have we with them, I should like to know?” “She wanted us to keep them, she——” “Wanted us! I'd have let her want, if I'd been here. However, go on. She was sorry I wasn't there, was she?” “Well, at first she said so, but in a little while she told me that she was glad. And after that she said I didn't know how glad she was for you never to set eyes on her again!” “Never's a long time,” muttered John William. “Did she explain herself?” he added, as loud as they ventured to speak. “Y—yes.” Arabella was hesitating. “Then out with it!” “She told me—it can't be true, but yet she did tell me—that you—fancied yourself in love with her, John William!” “It isn't true.” “Thank God for that!” “Stop a moment. Not so fast, my girl! It isn't true—because there's no fancy at all about it, d'ye see?” Arabella saw. It was written and painted all over his lined yet glowing face; but where there could be least mistake about it was in his eyes. They were ablaze with love—with love for a woman who had neither name, honour, nor common purity. He could not know this. But Arabella knew all, and it was her business—nay, her solemn undertaking—to repeat all that she knew to John William. “I was told,” she faltered, “what to say to you if you said that.” “Who told you?” “She did—Missy.” “Then say it right out.” But that was difficult between brother and sister. At first he refused to understand, and then he refused to believe. “It's a lie!” he cried hoarsely. “I don't believe a word of it!” “And do you suppose I would make it up? Upon my sacred honour, John William, it is only what she told me with her own——” “I know that; it's her lie—I never meant it was yours. No, no, it's Missy's lie to choke me off. But it shan't! No, by Heaven, and it shouldn't if it were the living truth!” There was no more to be said. The man knew that, and he relit the pipe, which he had scarcely tasted, without looking at the sister whom he had silenced. Presently he said in a perfectly passionless voice, coming back from the unspeakable to a point which it was possible to discuss: “About those things of hers—all her clothes. Did you say that she wanted us to keep them? And if so, why?” “Because,” said Arabella with some reluctance, “they were bought with money which—as she said herself—she had obtained from father on false pretences.” It may have been because he was now quite calm outwardly, but at this the man winced more visibly than at what had come out before. “From father,” he repeated at length; “he couldn't let her have much, anyway!” “He let her have twenty pounds.” “Never; the bank wouldn't let him have it.” “The bank didn't; he got it on his watch.” “On the watch that's—mending?”