He rose and paced the room quickly with unequal steps. His face was blanched, his eyes were fixed, his clenched hands trembled. "Ah!" he cried bitterly to himself, "it would have been best to have resigned and gone abroad months ago, while there was yet time. Under another name I might have contrived to conceal my identity in one or other of the colonies, where they do not inquire too closely into a man's antecedents. But, alas! it is now too late. My movements are evidently watched, and I am under suspicion, owing to the discovery of my connection with that scoundrel Lennox. To resign my appointment is impossible. I can only remain and face the ruin, shame, and ignominy that are inevitable. I have sinned before God, and before man!" he cried wildly, his face upturned, his clenched hands held trembling above his head in blank despair. "For me there is no forgiveness--none!-- none! My only means of escape is suicide," he gasped with bated breath. "A few drops of liquid in a wine-glass full of innocent water, and all will be over--all the anguish, all the fever. No, it is not difficult-- not at all," and he laughed a hard, dry, sarcastic laugh. "And a final drastic step of that sort is far preferable to shame and ruin." He was silent for some time. His lips were still moving as he stood there in the centre of the room, but no sound came from them. In the awful agony he suffered he spoke to himself and heard words that were unuttered. The possibility which he had suspected and dreaded during so many dark weeks was now becoming horribly realised. His secret sin would before long be revealed in all its true hideousness, and he, England's rising statesman, the man of whom so much was prophesied, the man who was trusted by the Prime Minister, who held such a brilliant and responsible position, and who was envied by all the lesser fry in the House, would be rudely cast forth as unfit and unworthy, his name, honoured for generations, rendered odious. Truly his position was graver and more precarious than that of ninety-nine out of a hundred men. Condemnation was at hand. Cator, now that he knew the name of Mayne Lennox, would not be long in laying bare the whole of the facts. And then? He thought it all over, sighing heavily and clenching his hands in wild despair. To no single person could he look for assistance, for he dared not confide in any one. He could only suffer alone, and pay the penalty for his sin.