And Gwendoline was so happy, too, over Granville Kelmscott's return! How could he endure that Granville Kelmscott's return should be the signal for discovering her father's sin and shame to her! If only he could have married her off before it all came out! Or if only he could die before the man was tried!--Tried! Sir Gilbert's eyes started from his head with horror. What was that Elma Clifford suggested the other night? Why--if the man was arrested, he would be arrested at Plymouth, the moment he landed, and would be tried for murder at the Western Assizes. And it was he himself, Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve, who was that term to take the Western Circuit. He would be called upon to sit on the bench himself, and try Guy Waring for the murder he had himself committed! No wonder that thought sent him ill to bed at once. He lay and tossed all night long in speechless agony and terror. It was an appalling night. Next morning he was found delirious with fever. When the news reached Elma, she saw its full and fatal significance. Cyril had stopped on for three days at the Holkers', and he came over in the course of the morning to take a walk across the fields with her. Elma was profoundly excited, Cyril could hardly see why. "This is a terrible thing," she said, "about Sir Gilbert's illness. What I'm afraid of now is that he may die before your brother returns. The shock must have been awful for him; mamma noticed it every bit as much as I did; and so did Miss Ewes. They both said at once, 'This blow will kill him!' And they both knew why, Cyril, as well as I did. It's the Ewes' intuition. We've all of us got it, and we all of us say, at once and unanimously--it was Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve." "But suppose he DID die," Cyril asked, still sceptical, as he always was when Elma got upon her instinctive consciousness; "what difference would that make? If Guy's innocent, as I suppose in some way he must be, from the tone of his telegram, he'll be acquitted whether Sir Gilbert's alive or not. And if he's guilty--" He broke off suddenly with an awful pause; the other alternative was too terrible to contemplate. "But he's NOT guilty," Elma answered with confidence. "I know it more surely now than ever. And the difficulty's this. Nobody knows the real truth, I feel certain, except Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve. And if Sir Gilbert dies unconfessed, the truth dies with him. And then--" She paused a moment. "I'm half afraid," she went on with a doubtful sigh, "your brother's been too precipitate in coming home to face it." "But, Elma," Cyril cried, "I can't bear to say it--yet one must face the facts--how on earth can he be innocent, when I tell you again and again he wrote to me himself saying he really did it?" "You never showed me that letter," Elma answered, with a faint undercurrent of reproach in her tone. "How could I?" Cyril replied. "Even to YOU, Elma, there are some things a man can hardly bear to speak about."