He walked to Bodmin and delivered his letter at the Rectory door. He would not run the risk of an hour's delay. On his way home he overtook Hilda, near the gates of The Spaniards. She was very pale when they met, and she grew still paler as they shook hands. After a word or two of greeting, they walked on side by side in silence. "I wonder that you can consent to be seen with me," said Bothwell presently, after a farmer's wife had driven past them on her way from market. "You must have heard by this time what people think about me--your brother foremost among them, I believe, for he has given me the cut direct more than once since the inquest." "I am sorry that he should be so ready to believe a lie," said Hilda, "for I know that this terrible slander is a lie." "God bless you for those straight, strong words, Hilda!" exclaimed Bothwell fervently. "Yes, it is a lie. I am not a good man. I have taken one false step in my life, and the consequences of that mistake have been very heavy upon me. But I am not capable of the kind of wickedness which my Bodmin friends put down to me. I have not risen to the sublimer heights of crime. I am not up to throwing a fellow-creature out of a railway-carriage." "Why did you not answer that man's questions at the inquest?" asked Hilda urgently, forgetting that she had hardly the right to demand his confidence. "That refusal of yours is the cause of all this misery. It seems such a foolish, obstinate act on your part." "I daresay it does. But I could not do more or less than I did. To have answered that inquisitive cur's prying questions categorically would have been to injure a lady. As a man of honour, I was bound to run all risks rather than do that." "I begin to understand," said Hilda, blushing crimson. Why had she not guessed his secret long before this? she asked herself. The mystery that surrounded him was the mystery of some fatal love-affair. She was only a secondary person in his life. There was another who had been more to him than she, Hilda, could ever be--another to whom he was bound, for whom he was willing to sacrifice his own character. She felt a jealous pang at the mere thought of that unknown one.