the fireplace, his eyes on the ground, his face
discoloured with vehement emotion.

'What has happened?' she asked.

He looked up and beckoned to her to approach.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Adela bad never seen him so smitten with grave trouble. She knew him in
brutal anger and in surly ill-temper; but his present mood had nothing
of either. He seemed to stagger beneath a blow which had all but crushed
him and left him full of dread. He began to address her in a voice
very unlike his own--thick, uncertain; he used short sentences, often
incomplete.

'Those men are on the committee. One of them got a letter this
morning--anonymous. It said they were to be on their guard against me.
Said the Company's a swindle--that I knew it--that I've got money out of
the people on false pretences. And Hilary's gone--gone off--taking all
he could lay hands on. The letter says so--I don't know. It says I'm
thick with the secretary--a man I never even saw. That he's a well-known
swindler--Delancey his name is. And these fellows believe it--demand
that I shall prove I'm innocent. What proof can I give? They think I
kept out of the way on purpose this morning.'

He ceased speaking, and Adela stood mute, looking him in the face.
She was appalled on his account. She did not love him; too often his
presence caused her loathing. But of late she had been surprised into
thinking more highly of some of his qualities than it had hitherto been
possible for her to do. She could never forget that he toiled first and
foremost for his own advancement to a very cheap reputation; he would
not allow her to lose sight of it had she wished. But during the present
winter she had discerned in him a genuine zeal to help the suffering, a
fervour in kindly works of which she had not believed him capable. Very
slowly the conviction had come to her, but in the end she could not
resist it. One evening, in telling her of the hideous misery he had
been amongst, his voice failed and she saw moisture in his eyes. Was his
character changing? Had she wronged him in attaching too much importance
to a fault which was merely on the surface? Oh, but there were too many
indisputable charges against him. Yet a man's moral nature may sometimes
be strengthened by experience of the evil he has wrought. All this
rushed through her mind as she now stood gazing at him.

'But how can they credit an anonymous letter?' she said. 'How can they
believe the worst of you before making