an
idiot? Just because I never dreamed _you_ knew. But I beg your pardon.
I only wanted to spare you. And what I don't now understand is how the
deuce then for so long you've managed to keep bottled.'

Peter produced his explanation, but only after some delay and with a
gravity not void of embarrassment. 'It was for your mother.'

'Oh!' said Lance.

'And that's the great thing now--since the murder _is_ out. I want
a promise from you. I mean'--and Peter almost feverishly followed it
up--'a vow from you, solemn and such as you owe me here on the spot,
that you'll sacrifice anything rather than let her ever guess--'

'That _I've_ guessed?'--Lance took it in. 'I see.' He evidently after
a moment had taken in much. 'But what is it you've in mind that I may
have a chance to sacrifice?'

'Oh one has always something.'

Lance looked at him hard. 'Do you mean that _you've_ had--?' The look
he received back, however, so put the question by that he found soon
enough another. 'Are you really sure my mother doesn't know?'

Peter, after renewed reflexion, was really sure. 'If she does she's
too wonderful.'

'But aren't we all too wonderful?'

'Yes,' Peter granted--'but in different ways. The thing's so
desperately important because your father's little public consists
only, as you know then,' Peter developed--'well, of how many?'

'First of all,' the Master's son risked, 'of himself. And last of all
too. I don't quite see of whom else.'

Peter had an approach to impatience. 'Of your mother, I
say--_always_.'

Lance cast it all up. 'You absolutely feel that?'

'Absolutely.'

'Well then with yourself that makes three.'

'Oh _me_!'--and Peter, with a wag of his kind old head, modestly
excused himself. The number's at any rate small enough for any
individual dropping out to be too dreadfully missed. Therefore, to put
it in a nutshell, take care, my boy--that's all--that _you're_ not!'

'_I've_ got to keep on humbugging?' Lance wailed.

'It's just to warn you of the danger of your failing of that that I've
seized this opportunity.'

'And what do you regard in particular,' the young man asked, 'as the
danger?'

'Why this certainty: that the moment your mother, who feels so
strongly, should suspect your secret--well,' said Peter desperately,
'the fat would be on the fire.'

Lance for a moment seemed to stare at the blaze. 'She'd throw me
over?'

'She'd throw _him_ over.'

'And come round to us?'

Peter, be