wered. "I am too deeply interested in knowing the truth to
talk of anything else."

His color changed again at that. His face flushed; he gave a heavy sigh
as one does sometimes, when one is making a great effort.

"You _will_ have it?" he said.

"I _will_ have it?"

He rose again. The nearer he was to telling me all that he had kept
concealed from me thus far, the harder it seemed to be to him to say the
first words.

"Do you mind walking on again?" he asked.

I silently rose on my side, and put my arm in his. We walked on slowly
towards the end of the pier. Arrived there, he stood still, and spoke
those hard first words--looking out over the broad blue waters: not
looking at me.

"I won't ask you to take anything for granted, on my assertion only," he
began. "The woman's own words, the woman's own actions, shall prove her
guilty."

I interrupted him by a question.

"Tell me one thing," I said. "What first made you suspect her?"

"You first made me suspect her, by what you said of her at Browndown," he
answered. "Now carry your memory back to the time I have already
mentioned in my letter--when she betrayed herself to you in the rectory
garden. Is it true that she said you would have fallen in love with
Nugent, if you had met him first instead of me?"

"It is true that she said it," I answered. "At a moment," I added, "when
her temper had got the better of her--and when mine had got the better of
me."

"Advance the hour a little," he went on, "to the time when she followed
you to Browndown. Was she still out of temper, when she made her excuses
to you?"

"No."

"Did she interfere, when Nugent took advantage of your blindness to make
you believe you were talking to me?"

"No."

"Was she out of temper then?"

I still defended her. "She might well have been angry," I said. "She had
made her excuses to me in the kindest manner; and I had received them
with the most unpardonable rudeness."

My defence produced no effect on him. He summed it up coolly so far. "She
compared me disadvantageously with Nugent; and she allowed Nugent to
personate me in speaking to you, without interfering to stop it. In both
these cases, her temper excuses and accounts for her conduct. Very good.
We may, or may not, differ so far. Before we go farther, let us--if we
can--agree on one unanswerable fact. Which of us two brothers was her
favorite, from the first?"

About _that,_ there could be no doubt. I admitted at once