"To prevent you making a beast of yourself," replied the young man sharply. "Have you no sense of shame, man? Your daughter is lying dead--murdered--and yet you sit drinking here as though nothing had occurred. Shame, Dr. Lester! Shame!" The drunkard listened vacantly to this speech, and mechanically raised the glass he held to his lips. In a moment Paul had dashed it out of his hand, and put himself on the defensive for the attack which he expected the creature to make on him. In place of doing so, and asserting some little manhood, the doctor bowed his shameful face on his hands, and began to weep in a maudlin manner. "Oh, dear! oh, dear! that I should be treated like this in my own house! Poor Milly dead, and I denied any comfort." "You won't get much comfort out of the brandy bottle," said Paul contemptuously. "Pull yourself together, Dr. Lester, and aid me." "Aid you--in what?" asked Lester confusedly. "In discovering who killed your daughter." The doctor wrung his hands in a helpless sort of manner. "No chance of that," said he; "no chance of that." "Why? Do you think the murderer has got clean away?" To the journalist's surprise, Lester put the same question to him as he had put to Drek. "How do you know the criminal is a man?" asked the doctor. "I did not say so." "You said murderer; if you had ascribed the crime to a woman you would have used the more correct word, murderess." "I think not, doctor; I am no purist. But what do you mean by such a speech, sir? Do you know who killed your daughter?" "No!" Lester looked confused. "Good Lord, Mexton! how should I know?" he burst out. "If I did--if I did----" "Well?" cried Mexton, impatiently, "if you did----?" "I want some more brandy," said Lester, with a vacant look. Paul was about to reply with some sharpness when he felt a light touch on his arm. It was Iris who had attracted his attention; and she had just entered quietly by the door. Her face was pallid as that of a corpse, her eyes were red and swollen with weeping, and she looked not at Mexton, but at the miserable creature who was her step-father. The expression in her eyes was one of mingled terror and repugnance. "Don't speak to him any more, Paul," she said, hurriedly; "he is not in a condition to answer questions." Mexton glanced at Lester, expecting him to make some defence; but the man was rapidly lapsing into a comatose condition. Without another word, he submitted to the pressure on his arm, and was drawn out of the room by Iris. In the passage she stopped and withdrew her hand. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "I came to see you, Iris; to assure you of my sympathy." "Is that true?"--she looked searchingly at him--"or did you come to learn all the particulars of our shame, to publish them to the world?" "Whatever I publish will be in your favour," retorted Paul. "I am your friend--not your enemy." "My friend? God knows I need one! I suppose everyone in Marborough knows that Milly is dead?"