es," she added
inconsistently, "I had to marry and--and--you never came."

"Then you sent the locket!"

The word sent a shiver through Mrs. Branscome with a remembrance of
the desecration of a gift which she had cherished as a holy thing. She
clung to flippancy as her defence.

"Oh, no! I never sent it. I lost it somewhere, I think. Must you go?"
she continued, as Hilton moved silently to the door. "I expect my
husband in just now. Won't you wait and meet him?"

"How dare you?" Hilton burst out. "Is there nothing of your true self
left?"

* * * * *
David Hilton's education was as yet in its infancy. This was not only
his first visit to England, but, indeed, to any spot further afield
than Interlaken. All of his six-and-twenty years that he could
recollect had been passed in a _chalet_ on the Scheidegg above
Grindelwald, his only companion an elderly recluse who had
deliberately cut himself off from communion with his fellows. The
trouble which had driven Mr. Strange, an author at one time of some
mark, into this seclusion, was now as completely forgotten as his
name. Even David knew nothing of its cause. That Strange was his uncle
and had adopted him when left an orphan at the age of six, was the
sum of his information. For although the pair had lived together for
twenty years, there had been little intercourse of thought between
them, and none of sentiment. Strange had, indeed, throughout shut his
nephew, not merely from his heart, but also from his confidence, at
first out of sheer neglect, and afterwards, as the lad grew towards
manhood, from deliberate intent. For, by continually brooding over his
embittered life, he had at last impregnated his weak nature with the
savage cynicism which embraced even his one comrade; and the child he
had originally chosen as a solace for his loneliness, became in the
end the victim of a heartless experiment. Strange's plan was based
upon a method of training. In the first place, he thoroughly isolated
David from any actual experience of persons beyond the simple
shepherd folk who attended to their needs and a few Alpine guides who
accompanied him on mountain expeditions. He kept incessant guard over
his own past life, letting no incidents or deductions escape, and fed
the youth's mind solely upon the ideal polities of the ancients,
his object being to launch him suddenly upon the world with little
knowledge of it beyond what had filtered through