This was true enough. Vicky was never at home more than a few days at a time and then absent for a week or so. Where? In the Fifth Avenue house as Ruth Schuyler? Incredible! Preposterous! But as I began to believe at last, true. "How?" I repeated; "how could she manage?" "Walls have tongues," said Stone. "These walls and this house tell me all the story. That is, they tell me this wonderful woman did accomplish this seemingly impossible thing. They tell me how she accomplished it. But they do not tell me why." "There's no question about the why," I returned. "If Ruth Schuyler did live two lives it's easily understood why. Because that brute of a man allowed her no gayety, no pleasure, no fun of any sort compatible with her youth and tastes. He let her do nothing, have nothing, save in the old, humdrum ways that appealed to his notion of propriety. But he himself was no Puritan! He ran his own gait, and, unknown to his wife and sisters, he was a roue and a rounder! Whatever Ruth Schuyler may have done, she was amply justified---" "Even in killing him?" "She didn't kill him! Look here, Mr. Stone, even if all you've said is true, you haven't convicted her of murder yet. And you shan't! I'll protect that woman from the breath of scandal or slander--and that's what it is when you accuse her of killing that man! She never did it!" "That remains to be seen," and Fleming Stone's deep gray eyes showed a sad apprehension. "But nothing can be done to-night. Can there, Terence?" "No, Mr. Stone, not to-night. No, by no means, not to-night! It wouldn't do!" The boy's earnestness seemed to me out of all proportion to his simple statement, but I could stand no more and I went home, to spend the night in a dazed wonder, a furious disbelief, and finally an enforced conviction that Vicky Van and Ruth Schuyler were one and the same. CHAPTER XX THE TRUTH FROM RUTH Next morning I was conscious of but one desire, to get to Ruth and tell her of my love and faith in her, and assure her of my protection and assistance whatever happened. Whatever happened! The thought struck me like a knell. What could happen but her arrest and trial? But as I went out of my own door--I left the house early, for I couldn't face Aunt Lucy and Winnie--I suddenly decided it would be better to see Stone first and learn if anything had transpired since I left him. I rang the bell at Vicky Van's house with a terrible feeling of impending disaster, that might be worse than any yet known. Fibsy let me in. I wanted to hate that boy and yet his very evident adoration of Ruth Schuyler made me love him. I knew all that he had discovered had been as iron entering his soul, but his duty led him on and he dared not pause or falter. "We may as well tell him," he said to Stone, and the detective nodded.