up
instantly, rising and confronting him. "You cannot mean that you deem
him guilty?" she demanded, with ominous restraint.

"My dear lady, no--a thousand times no," came the quick repudiation.
"But you must pardon my expressing the candid opinion that he is a fool,
a chivalrous, misguided fool, perhaps, who is risking his future from
some silly motive that would be brushed aside in a second if he would
only enlighten his friends about it. I have pleaded with him to adopt
that course but it was of no avail. Nothing would satisfy him but to fly
the country, he avowed, till the murder of Levison had been cleared
up--I presume by the detection of the real criminal."

"And in the meanwhile he is going to wander about the world in exile,
resting under a stigma which he does not deserve, till the end of his
days?"

"I do not think he looks at it quite in that light," said Nugent,
choosing his words carefully. "He is trusting that this cloud will blow
over. Candidly, in my judgment, he is afraid that if he is brought to
trial some episode in his life will come out--as likely as not some
harmless piece of youthful folly--which he wishes to conceal."

Violet made a hopeless gesture, avoiding the falsely sympathetic eyes of
this man, whom she intuitively disliked, but whose behaviour, she was
bound to admit, was perfectly correct. Her unseeing gaze made a dumb
appeal for comfort to the rich blooms of the rose-garden, to the blue
sky overhead, to the aged yew hedge that girt the place where she had
plighted her troth, but there seemed to be no comfort, no help anywhere.
Nugent's statement tallied with the impression she had formed the
previous night in the orangery exactly. Leslie had some reason, of which
he was ashamed, for dreading the fierce light of a legal inquiry being
thrown on his relations with the murdered Jew. It was to his credit,
anyhow, and she hugged the remembrance because she loved him, that he
had all along harped on some secret in his past career.

"Tell me," she said wearily, "what his message was. That can hardly have
been all of it--that he was running away?"

"No," replied Nugent, with the air of bracing himself for a distasteful
task, "there was something more. And before I pass it on to you, let me
assure you, Miss Maynard, that I tender no advice as to how you should
treat Chermside's proposition. I merely impart it to you as his
mouthpiece, and leave you to be guided by your own inclination and go