itement long ago, the world's
rough-and-ready justice would hardly have taken much account of
Carlisle's generous theory that perhaps the man didn't know what he was
doing. By the same token, it would scarcely reopen the case now to admit
that kind conjecture....

"I honor from the bottom of my heart, Carlisle," said Canning, "your
wish to do the strictest justice. Need I say that I'm with you there,
against the world? But what is the strictest justice? Perhaps you might
bring a ray of relief to the poor man's father, and that's all. Is that
really so great an object to move heaven and earth for, at the cost of
much pain and distress to all who love you?..."

Having spoken at some length, Canning paused for a reply. The pause ran
longer than he found encouraging. However, he was no more sensitive to
it, to Carlisle's strange unresponsiveness as he talked, than was the
girl herself. Indeed, it tore Cally's heart to seem to oppose her lover,
pleading so strongly and sweetly for her against herself. Yet she had
several times been tempted to interrupt him, so clear did it seem to her
that he did not understand even now all that she had supposed was fully
plain to him last night.

She said with marked nervousness, and a kind of eagerness, too: "You're
so good and dear in the way you look at it, Hugo. You don't know--how
sweet.... But it all comes down to whether he knew--doesn't it--just as
you said. Well, you see I really _know_ he didn't--"

"You're mistaken there, my dear! Only God Almighty knows that. Don't you
think we had better leave the judgment to him?"

That Canning spoke quite patiently was a great credit to his
self-control. His failure to move her had filled him with a depressing
and mortifying surprise. To say nothing of the regard she might be
supposed to have for his wishes, he knew that he had spoken
unanswerably.

"But you see--I really do know he wasn't such a coward, Hugo," said
Carlisle, with the same nervous eagerness to accuse herself. "I--I knew
him quite well--at one time. He was a wonderful swimmer, never
afraid.... Perhaps it's only a feeling--but, indeed, I _know_ he
wouldn't have swum off and left me--if--"

"My dear girl, if you were really so certain of that, why didn't you say
so at the time?"

Carlisle, looking at the floor, said wistfully: "If I only had...."

She was acutely aware that his question carried a new tone into the
discussion, that Hugo had criticised her for the first