years to find it out?

"I was shockingly obtuse," she murmured. "The thing came to me just now
as a revelation. Poor, dear man, how you must have suffered. This puts
us on a different footing altogether, doesn't it?" "Altogether," he
admitted.

"And," she continued, eyeing him now with a sudden nervousness,
"emboldens me to ask you a question which I have been dying to ask you
for the last few years. I wonder whether you will answer it."

"I wonder!" he repeated.

A change in him, too, was noticeable. That wonderful impassivity of
feature which never even in his lighter moments passed altogether away,
seemed to deepen every line in his hard, clear-cut face. His mouth was
close drawn, his eyes were suddenly colder and expressionless. There
was about him at such times as--these an almost repellent hardness. His
emotions, and the man himself, seemed frozen. Lady Caroom had seen him
look like it once before, and she sighed. Nevertheless, she persevered.

"For nearly twenty years," she said, "you disappeared. You were
reported at different times to be in every quarter of the earth, from
Zambesia to Pekin. But no one knew, and, of course, in a season or two
you were forgotten. I always wondered, I am wondering now, where were
you? What did you do with yourself?

"I went down into Hell," he answered. "Can't you see the marks of it in
my face? For many years I lived in Hell--for many years."

"You puzzle me," she said, in a low tone. "You had no taste for
dissipation. You look as though life had scorched you up at some time
or other. But how? where? You were found in Canada, I know, when your
brother died. But you had only been there for a few years. Before
then?"

"Ay! Before then?"

There was a short silence. Then Arranmore, who had been gazing steadily
into the fire, looked up. She fancied that his eyes were softer.

"Dear friend," he said, "of those days I have nothing to tell--even you.
But there are more awful things even than moral degeneration. You do me
justice when you impute that I never ate from the trough. But what I
did, and where I lived, I do not think that I shall ever willingly tell
any one."

A piece of burning wood fell upon the hearthstone. He stooped and
picked it up, placed it carefully in its place, and busied himself for a
moment or two with the little brass poker. Then he straightened
himself.

"Catherine," he said, "I think if I were you that I would not marry
Sybil to Molyneux. It st