eward more than an owner--a caretaker, I should rather
say. This would make my son and his son after him owners again. It's the
restoration of our house." His voice sank a little. "And it would come
through her and Leonard Octon!" Silence came again for a while; then he
turned round and faced me. "I've no right to decide this question. She
has taken the decision out of my hand by this. I have memories,
resentments, what I think to be wrongs and humiliations. Perhaps I have
cause for thinking so."

"I wasn't sent here to deny that, Lord Fillingford. If that hadn't been
so, not I should have been here, but she who sent me."

"And so," he went on slowly, "I'm no judge. I should sin against my
conscience if I were to judge. The question is not for me--let her go to
Amyas himself."

I was glad at heart--we had escaped bullying; only in one moment of
temper had I hinted at it, and that moment seemed now far away. It was
easy to see the defects of this man, and easier still to feel them as a
vaguely chilling influence. His virtues were harder to see and to
appreciate--his justice, his candor of mind, his rectitude, the humility
beneath his pride.

"Lord Lacey attaches enormous importance to your opinion. I know that as
well as you do. Can't you go a little further?"

"I thought I had gone about as far as could be expected."

"Not quite. Won't you tell your son what you would do if you were in his
place?"

"I think you'd better not ask me to do that. I'm less sure of what I
should do than I am of what he will do. What he'll do will, I think,
content you--I might think too much of who his father is, and of who her
father was, and from whose hand these splendid benefits come. I think
I'd better not advise Amyas."

"But you'll accept his decision? You'll not dissuade him?"

"I daren't dissuade him," he answered briefly and turned his back on me
again. He added in a tone that at least strove to be lighter, "My
grandchildren might rise up and call me cursed! But if she looks for
thanks--not from this generation!"

For the first time--though I sacrifice finally my character for morality
by that confession--I was genuinely, in my heart and not in my pretenses
or professions, inclined to regret the night at Hatcham Ford--the
discovery and the flight. All said, he was a man. After much conflict
they might have come together. If she had known then that it was man
against man--not man against name, title, position, respectabil