For Ethel's sake. He wanted to protect her. If Mrs. Trent could prove
her stories, he meant to expose Oliver to Ethel and myself, if it were
but an hour before her marriage----"

"And why didn't he?" demanded Lesley, breathlessly.

"Because--here comes in your father's evidence--your father assures me
that when he reached the house that night and confronted Oliver, the
woman took back every word that she had uttered, and declared that it
was all a lie. And Oliver, of course, persisted that he had done nothing
amiss. Your father says he was so much tempted to strike Oliver to the
ground--for he did not believe in Kingston's retractation--that he flung
his stick out upon the landing lest he should use it too effectually. He
forgot to pick it up, and came away without it. The pocket-book must of
course have fallen out of his pocket as he left the house."

"Then he could not convict Mr. Trent of anything?"

"No, and so he did not feel justified in meddling. But he wishes that he
had gone to Ethel at once--or that I had been at home and that he had
come to me. He is reproaching himself terribly for his silence now."

"As I have been reproaching myself for mine," said Lesley.

"You have no need. Ethel would never have believed the stories--and as
Mrs. Trent denied them again, I think that Oliver would have carried the
day. But let her deny them as she will, I believe that they were true,
and that Oliver was a villain. Our poor Ethel may live to bless the day
when she was delivered from him."

"I am afraid she will never believe us, or forgive us if she does,"
sighed Lesley. "But what else happened?"

"Your father left the building, after a long and angry conversation,
about midnight. Oliver remained behind. Of course your father knows
nothing more. But Mrs. Trent says that Oliver went away ten minutes
later, and that she then heard loud words and the sound of a struggle
upon the stairs. Fights are too common in that neighborhood to excite
much remark. She, however, feeling anxious, stole down the upper flight
of stairs, and distinctly saw Mr. Brooke and her brother-in-law
struggling together. She maintains that Mr. Brooke's stick was in his
hand."

"How wickedly false! Why did she not scream if she saw such a sight?"

"She was afraid. And she says that she did not think it would come
to--_murder_. She crept back to her room again, and in a few minutes
everything was quiet. Only--in the early morning the dead body of