sore heart, unconquerable for
all she had desperately fought it--with the revelation of treachery
which lay now at the bottom of the lake.

Philip was very white.

"But," he said gently, "you could not know."

"I could have waited and trusted," cried the girl. "I could have
remembered Arcadia!"

Was Ronador forgotten? Tregar thought so. These two mutely avowing
with blazing eyes their utter trust and loyalty had for the moment
forgotten everything but each other.

Ronador stalked viciously away to the lake, restlessly turned on his
heel with a curse and came slowly back. There was despair in his eyes.
Tregar thought of the black moments of impulse and the tearing
conscience and pitied him profoundly.

"Excellency," reminded Diane, "there is an explanation--"

But Ronador's pallid lips were set in lines of fierce denial.

"Philip!" appealed the girl.

"Well," said Philip looking away, "it's a tale of a candlestick."

"A candlestick!"

"And a hidden paper."

"Yes?"

Ronador seemed about to speak, thought better of it and closed his lips
in a tense white line of sullenness.

Philip glanced keenly at him, and his own mouth grew a little sterner.

"Excellency," he said to Ronador, "that you may not feel impelled again
to violence in the suppression of this curious fragment of family
history, let me warn you that the story has been entrusted in full to
Father Joda, who knew and loved your cousin. Any spectacular
irrationality that you may hereafter develop in connection with Miss
Westfall, will lead to its disclosure. He is pledged to that in
writing."

The color died out of Ronador's face. The fire, roused by the specter
he had fought this many a day, burned itself quite to ashes and left
him cold and sullen. He had played and lost. And he was an older and
quieter man for the losing. Whatever else lay at the bottom of his
contradictory maze of dark moods and passions, he had courage and the
curse of conscience. There were black memories struggling now within
him.

Tregar moved quietly to Ronador's side, an act of ready loyalty not
without dignity in the eyes of Philip.

"Your letter hinted something of all this," he said. "Let us be quite
fair, Poynter. Ronador feared only for his little son."

"Why must we talk in riddles?" cried Diane with a flash of impatience.
"Why does Ronador fear for his son? Where is the candlestick? And the
paper? Who found it?"

"Carl found it," said Phi