I must now go back a little. After my suspicions had been aroused as to the state of Charley’s feelings, I hesitated for a long time before I finally made up my mind to tell him the part Clara had had in the loss of my sword. But while I was thus restrained by dread of the effect the disclosure would have upon him if my suspicions were correct, those very suspicions formed the strongest reason for acquainting him with her duplicity; and, although I was always too ready to put off the evil day so long as doubt supplied excuse for procrastination, I could not have let so much time slip by and nothing said but for my absorption in Mary. At length, however, I had now resolved, and one evening, as we sat together, I took my pipe from my mouth, and, shivering bodily, thus began: ‘Charley,’ I said, ‘I have had for a good while something on my mind, which I cannot keep from you longer.’ He looked alarmed instantly. I went on. ‘I have not been quite open with you about that affair of the sword.’ He looked yet more dismayed; but I must go on, though it tore my very heart. When I came to the point of my overhearing Clara talking to Brotherton, he started up, and, without waiting to know the subject of their conversation, came close up to me, and, his face distorted with the effort to keep himself quiet, said, in a voice hollow and still and far-off, like what one fancies of the voice of the dead: ‘Wilfrid, you said Brotherton, I think?’ ‘I did, Charley.’ ‘She never told me that!’ ‘How could she when she was betraying your friend?’ ‘No no!’ he cried, with a strange mixture of command and entreaty; ‘don’t say that. There is some explanation. There _must_ be.’ ‘She told _me_ she hated him,’ I said. ‘_I know_ she hates him. What was she saying to him?’ ‘I tell you she was betraying me, your friend, who had never done her any wrong, to the man she had told me she hated, and whom I had heard her ridicule.’ ‘What do you mean by betraying you?’ I recounted what I had overheard. He listened with clenched teeth and trembling white lips; then burst into a forced laugh. ‘What a fool I am! Distrust _her!_ I will _not_. There is some explanation! There _must_ be!’ The dew of agony lay thick on his forehead. I was greatly alarmed at what I had done, but I could not blame myself. ‘Do be calm, Charley,’ I entreated. ‘I am as calm as death,’ he replied, striding up and down the room with long strides. He stopped and came up to me again. ‘Wilfrid,’ he said, ‘I am a damned fool. I am going now. Don’t be frightened--I am perfectly calm. I will come and explain it all to you to-morrow--no--the next day--or the next at latest. She had some reason for hiding it from me, but I shall have it all the moment I ask her. She is not what you think her. I don’t for a moment blame you--but--are you sure it was--Clara’s--voice you heard?’ he added with forced calmness and slow utterance.