aven! Make an end of it for them, confound them and cover them with
shame."

He said it roughly, angrily, and Lionel recoiled, deeming that roughness
and anger aimed at himself. He sank into a chair, his knees loosened by
his sudden fear. So it seemed that he had had more than cause for his
apprehensions. This brother of his who boasted such affection for him
was not equal to bearing this matter through. And yet the thing was so
unlike Oliver that a doubt still lingered with him.

"You... you will tell them the truth?" he said, in small, quavering
voice.

Sir Oliver turned and considered him more attentively.

"A God's name, Lal, what's in thy mind now?" he asked, almost roughly.
"Tell them the truth? Why, of course--but only as it concerns myself.
You're not supposing that I shall tell them it was you? You'll not be
accounting me capable of that?"

"What other way is there?"

Sir Oliver explained the matter. The explanation brought Lionel relief.
But this relief was ephemeral. Further reflection presented a new fear
to him. It came to him that if Sir Oliver cleared himself, of necessity
his own implication must follow. His terrors very swiftly magnified a
risk that in itself was so slender as to be entirely negligible. In his
eyes it ceased to be a risk; it became a certain and inevitable danger.
If Sir Oliver put forward this proof that the trail of blood had not
proceeded from himself, it must, thought Lionel, inevitably be concluded
that it was his own. As well might Sir Oliver tell them the whole truth,
for surely they could not fail to infer it. Thus he reasoned in his
terror, accounting himself lost irrevocably.

Had he but gone with those fears of his to his brother, or had he but
been able to abate them sufficiently to allow reason to prevail, he must
have been brought to understand how much further they carried him than
was at all justified by probability. Oliver would have shown him this,
would have told him that with the collapsing of the charge against
himself no fresh charge could be levelled against any there, that no
scrap of suspicion had ever attached to Lionel, or ever could. But
Lionel dared not seek his brother in this matter. In his heart he was
ashamed of his fears; in his heart he knew himself for a craven. He
realized to the full the hideousness of his selfishness, and yet, as
before, he was not strong enough to conquer it. In short, his love of
himself was greater than his love of his b