"There is nothing for you to add about Maud?" "No. I have told you all candidly." The young man seized Grey by the throat, and pulled him upon his feet. For a moment he swayed the banker to and fro. "Not this. Fire if you are a man. Not this." "Damnation seize you for a fool! You terrified me about nothing." He flung Grey violently from him. "About nothing! I told you all her money is gone." "And when did I tell you I wanted her money?" "You never said anything to me about it." "You are a fool, sir, and have terrified me for nothing." Sir William stooped down, picked up the revolver, which had fallen from his hand in the scuffle, and raising the window quietly dropped it into the Weeslade. Then turning to the banker he said: "Who knows of this?" "Only you and I and my mother." "That is true, is it?" "It is." "Miss Midharst has no suspicion of it?" "Not the slightest. Only three people on earth know it. The three I have named." "Keep the secret where it is, and meet me here to-morrow at noon. I shall then let you know what I intend doing." CHAPTER IX. BANKER AND BARONET. Next noon, as appointed, Grey called at the "Warfinger Hotel" and saw Sir William. The interview was a brief one. Sir William informed the banker he had made up his mind to only one thing so far, namely, to keep the secret and do nothing for a month or two. "This looks very like compounding a felony," said the young man, "but I am prepared to take that risk." Grey went away respited. It was a great relief nothing was to be done at once, but when something came to be done what would it be? That was the question which followed Grey day and night, waking and sleeping, through two long weary months. One qualifying fact operated greatly in his favour: day after day he lost susceptibility. Something was happening which dulled his sense of danger or exposure. He had begun to forget more and more, and it was only on rare occasions he had a clear and well-defined idea of his position. He had a weak conviction Sir William would not have him prosecuted, but what would the young man do? But if the tyranny of the theft had lost its poignancy, he had two fiercer troubles left. Every old broken-down woman he met in the street was his mother. By day he met his mother a thousand times; she crawled close to the wall, she had sold all her clothes for bread, she had worn out her boots, and her bare feet, her poor old bare feet, touched the cold wet streets. If he took up a paper his eye fell on some paragraph relating to the death in great misery of an old woman over seventy who had seen better days. But it was when the twilight had died, and all the land lay in the dark trance of night, the prime actor in his mental disaster entered on the scene.