e in silence there, turning them over in
his mind and considering the riddle which they presented him. He thought
of asking his brother bluntly for the key to it, for the precise meaning
of his disconcerting statement, but courage failed him. He feared lest
Sir Oliver should confirm his own dread interpretation of it.

He drew away after a time, and soon after went to bed. For days
thereafter the phrase rankled in his mind--"I can throw off the burden
when I will." Conviction grew upon him that Sir Oliver meant that he
was enheartened by the knowledge that by speaking if he choose he
could clear himself. That Sir Oliver would so speak he could not think.
Indeed, he was entirely assured that Sir Oliver was very far from
intending to throw off his burden. Yet he might come to change his
mind. The burden might grow too heavy, his longings for Rosamund too
clamorous, his grief at being in her eyes her brother's murderer too
overwhelming.

Lionel's soul shuddered to contemplate the consequences to himself. His
fears were self-revelatory. He realized how far from sincere had been
his proposal that they should tell the truth; he perceived that it had
been no more than the emotional outburst of the moment, a proposal
which if accepted he must most bitterly have repented. And then came the
reflection that if he were guilty of emotional outbursts that could
so outrageously play the traitor to his real desires, were not all men
subject to the same? Might not his brother, too, come to fall a prey
to one of those moments of mental storm when in a climax of despair he
would find his burden altogether too overwhelming and in rebellion cast
it from him?

Lionel sought to assure himself that his brother was a man of stern
fibres, a man who never lost control of himself. But against this he
would argue that what had happened in the past was no guarantee of what
might happen in the future; that a limit was set to the endurance of
every man be he never so strong, and that it was far from impossible
that the limit of Sir Oliver's endurance might be reached in this
affair. If that happened in what case should he find himself? The answer
to this was a picture beyond his fortitude to contemplate. The danger
of his being sent to trial and made to suffer the extreme penalty of the
law would be far greater now than if he had spoken at once. The tale
he could then have told must have compelled some attention, for he
was accounted a man of unsmi