he studied the other's face; then he
said: "I asked you a little while ago who was right and what was wrong
when you came to see my father here fifteen years ago. Well?"

Suddenly a thought flashed into his eyes, and it seemed to course
through his veins like some anaesthetic, for he grew very still, and a
minute passed before he added quietly: "Was it a thing between my father
and Luke Claridge? There was trouble--well, what was it?" All at once
he seemed to rise above the vague anxiety that possessed him, and he
fingered inquiringly a long tapering glass of acids on the bench beside
him. "There's been so much mystery, and I suppose it was nothing, after
all. What was it all about? Or do you know--eh? Fifteen years ago you
came to see my father, and now you have come to see me--all in the light
o' the moon, as it were; like a villain in a play. Ah, yes, you said
it was to make an experiment--yet you didn't know what oxygen was! It's
foolish making experiments, unless you know what you are playing with,
Soolsby. See, here are two glasses." He held them up. "If I poured one
into the other, we'd have an experiment--and you and I would be picked
up in fragments and carried away in a basket. And that wouldn't be a
successful experiment, Soolsby."

"I'm not so sure of that, my lord. Some things would be put right then."

"H'm, there would be a new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and--"

"And Claridge Pasha would come back from Egypt, my lord," was the sharp
interjection. Suddenly Soolsby's anger flared up, his hands twitched.
"You had your chance to be a friend to him, my lord. You promised
her yonder at the Red Mansion that you would help him--him that never
wronged you, him you always wronged, and you haven't lifted hand to help
him in his danger. A moment since you asked me who was right and what
was wrong. You shall know. If you had treated him right, I'd have held
my peace, and kept my word to her that's gone these thirty-odd years.
I'll hold it no more, and so I told Luke Claridge. I've been silent, but
not for your father's sake or yours, for he was as cruel as you, with no
heart, and a conscience like a pin's head, not big enough for use... Ay,
you shall know. You are no more the Earl of Eglington than me.

"The Earl of Eglington is your elder brother, called David Claridge."

As Soolsby's words poured forth passionately, weighty, Eglington
listened like one in a dream. Since this man entered the laboratory