ch the old lady had read between the lines, and
wondering how much of his secret she had guessed.

She proceeded to cross-examine him after the fashion of a barrister
handling a hostile witness. "Leaving aside for the moment the question
of financial position," she continued, "is there any other cause or
impediment why you should not be joined in holy matrimony to my
great-niece? As a man of honour you will answer me truly and without
reserve."

Leslie stole a glance at Violet and saw that she had become suddenly
grave. Nurtured in the midst of luxury, she hardly knew the value of
money, and had the most profound contempt for it; but she cherished the
highest ideals of what a man's moral worth should be, and she was
clearly awaiting his answer with eager interest.

"Yes," said Leslie, scarcely hesitating, "there is the strongest
possible reason why Violet should not marry me. I have already urged it
upon her--that I am utterly unworthy."

"He is not so black as he would paint himself, Aunt Sarah," the girl
pleaded. "Some quixotic idea----"

"Mind your steering or we shall all be in the water," the old lady cut
her short. "Now, Mr. Chermside, be explicit, please. Why are you
unworthy to marry my niece?"

"Because," replied Leslie, who had expected the question. "I consented,
under stress of peculiar circumstances, to aid and abet a base
conspiracy for doing a great injury to an innocent person. It is true
that I repented and left my tempters in the lurch, but I cannot hold
myself white-washed on that account."

Miss Sarah Dymmock, not having a barrister's gown to hitch up, adjusted
her mushroom hat before returning to the charge. "Has this piece of
villainy you set out to do since been accomplished by the people who
tried to mislead you?" she demanded.

"It has not," rejoined Leslie firmly. "And please God it never will.
They have not, I believe, abandoned it; but I am devoting such feeble
powers as I possess to thwarting them. I claim no leniency on that
score. I tell you, Miss Dymmock, as I have told Violet, that the thing
was a horrible thing, and that no decent woman ought to be joined to a
man who, even in a mad lapse born of unspeakable misery, could have
become a consenting party to it for a single minute."

Aunt Sarah nodded sagely once or twice, and let her keen old eyes rest
for a while on the red cliffs past which the boat was gliding.
"Reverting to the question of means," she resumed at length, "if