"Why go?" he repeated. "Can't you understand that the one desire I have, the one burning desire, is to put myself as far away as possible from the sight and memory of what happened that night? We have been telephoning through to London. I have taken my passage for America on Saturday. I shall go straight out to the Rockies. I just want to get where I can forget your look and the words with which your father turned me out of his house. And worse than that," he added, with a little shake in his tone, "their justice--their cruel, abominable justice." Then what was surely a miracle happened. She leaned forward and took his hand. Her eyes were soft with sympathy. "You poor thing!" she exclaimed. "You couldn't do anything else. I have been thinking it over very seriously. It was a horrible position for you, but you really couldn't do anything else, that I can see. You told your story simply and like a man. But wait. There is one thing I can't understand. Those shares--were they not to be part of that poor man's vengeance. You surely never intended that we should benefit by them in this extraordinary way?" "I believed them," he told her firmly, "when I sold them to your father, to be, until long after he would have had to pay for them, at any rate, absolutely worthless. The wholly unexpected has happened, as it does often in oil. Your father's shares are worth a fortune. He can realise his idea of clearing Mandeleys. He can dispose of them to-day for three hundred thousand pounds. Lady Letitia, you have come to me like an angel. This is the sweetest thing any woman ever did. Be still kinder. Please make your father keep the shares. They are his. They were sold to ruin him. It is just the chance of something that happened many thousand miles away, which has turned them in his favour. He accepts nothing from me. It is fate only which brings him this windfall." "I promise," she said. "To tell you the truth, I think father is as much changed, during the last few days, as I am. When I saw him, about an hour ago, and told him that I was coming to see you, I was almost frightened at first. He looks older, and I fancy that something which has happened lately--something quite outside--has been a great blow to him." "Does he know, then, how kind you are being to me?" David asked. She nodded. "He rather hoped," she whispered, leaning a little closer still to him and smiling into his face, "that you would come back with me and dine." David suddenly clutched her hands. He was a man again. He threw away his doubts. He accepted Paradise. On their way across the park, a short time later, he suddenly pointed down towards the little cottage. "You haven't forgotten, Letitia," he said, "that I lived there? You haven't forgotten that that old man was my uncle!--that his father and grandfather were the servants of your family?"