He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her hands. Then she said in a whisper: "You don't mean--murder?" Her brother's silence gave her the answer. There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her breath: "Poor Dudley!" Max was astonished to see her take the announcement so quietly. "Well, now you see that it is impossible to do anything for him, don't you?" "Indeed, I do not!" retorted Doreen, with spirit. "We don't know the story yet. We don't know whether there is any truth in it at all; or, if there is, what the difficulties were that he was in. Look, Max. You must remember how worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have done anything mean or underhand or unworthy." "Don't you call murder, manslaughter--whatever it is--unworthy?" asked Max, irritably. "Not without knowing something about it," answered she. "And I think there's generally more to be said for the man who commits murder than for any other criminal. And--and"--her voice gave way and began to shake with tears--"I don't care what he's done, I'm sorry for him. I--I want to help him, or--or, at least, I want to see him to tell him so!" Max was alarmed. Knowing the spirit and courage of his brilliant sister, he was afraid lest she should conceive the idea of starting off herself on some mad enterprise; so he said hastily: "He's away now, you know. He's gone without leaving any address. Perhaps I was wrong, after all. Perhaps when he comes back he will be himself again, and--and everything will be cleared up. We can only wait and see." But this lame attempt at comfort met with no warm response from his sister. She looked at him with a poor little attempt at a contemptuous smile, and then, afraid of breaking down altogether, sprang up from the arm-chair in which she had been sitting and left him to himself. Max did not recover his usual spirits at luncheon, where everybody else was full of mirthful anticipation of the household dance, another idea of Mr. Wedmore's, which was to be a feature of the evening. And after that meal, instead of offering to drive to the station to meet Miss Appleby, as everybody had expected, Max took himself off, nobody knew where, and did not return home until dusk. Coming through a little side gate in the park, he got into the great yard behind the house, where the stables stood on one side and a huge barn, which was only used as a storage place for lumber, on the other. And it occurred to him that if the woman of whom the groom told him were still hanging about the premises, as the servants seemed to think, this was the very place she might be expected to choose as a hiding-place.