f isolation upon your subsequent actions. I entered upon my duties--how
you must have smiled at me behind my back! Never was a man more
completely and absolutely deceived. I lived with you, was always by your
side, I was there professedly to study your actions and the method of
them. And yet you found it a perfectly simple matter to hoodwink me
whenever you chose!"

"In what respect?" Wingrave asked calmly.

"Every respect!" Aynesworth answered. "Let me tell you two things which
happened to me yesterday. I met a young New York stockbroker, named
Nesbitt, in London, and in common with all London, I suppose, by this
time, I learnt the secret of all those anonymous contributions to the
hospitals and other charitable causes during the last year."

"Go on," Wingrave said.

"I have come here on purpose to tell you what I think you are,"
Aynesworth said. "You are the greatest hypocrite unhanged. You affect to
hate your fellows and to love evil-doers. You deceived the whole world,
and you deceived me. I know you now for what you are. You conceived your
evil plans, but when the time came for carrying them out, you funked
it every time. You had that silly little woman on the steamer in your
power, and you yourself, behind your own back, released her with that
Marconigram to her husband, sent by yourself. You brought the boy
Nesbitt face to face with ruin, and to his face you offered him no
mercy. Behind his back you employ a lawyer to advance him your own money
to pay your own debt. You decline to give a single penny away in charity
and, as stealthily as possible, you give away in one year greater sums
than any other man has ever parted with. You decline to help the poor
little orphan child of the village organist, and secretly you have her
brought up in your own home, and stop the sale of your pictures for the
sake of the child whom you had only once contemptuously addressed. Can
you deny any one of these things?"

"No!" Wingrave answered quietly, "I cannot."

"And I thought you a strong man," Aynesworth continued, aggrieved and
contemptuous. "I nearly went mad with fear when I heard that it was you
who were the self-appointed guardian of Juliet Lundy. I looked upon this
as one more, the most diabolical of all your schemes!"

Wingrave rose to his feet, still and grave.

"Aynesworth," he said, "this interview does not interest me. Let us
bring it to an end. I admit that I have made a great failure of my life.
I admit tha