flippancy died out of Dick Hazlewood's face. He became at once
grave, wary.

"I have been hearing about him," continued Mrs. Pettifer. "He has made
friends with her--a woman who has stood in the dock on a capital charge."

"And has been acquitted," Dick Hazlewood added quietly and Mrs. Pettifer
blazed up.

"She wouldn't have been acquitted if I had been on the jury. A
parcel of silly men who are taken in by a pretty face!" she cried,
and Dick broke in:

"Aunt Margaret, I am sorry to interrupt you. But I want you to understand
that I am with my father heart and soul in this."

He spoke very slowly and deliberately and Mrs. Pettifer was
utterly dismayed.

"You!" she cried. She grew pale, and alarm so changed her face it was as
if a tragic mask had been slipped over it. "Oh, Dick, not you!"

"Yes, I. I think it is cruelly hard," he continued with his eyes
relentlessly fixed upon Mrs. Pettifer's face, "that a woman like Mrs.
Ballantyne, who has endured all the horrors of a trial, the publicity,
the suspense, the dread risk that justice might miscarry, should have
afterwards to suffer the treatment of a leper."

There was for the moment no room for any anger now in Mrs. Pettifer's
thoughts. Consternation possessed her. She weighed every quiet firm word
that fell from Dick, she appreciated the feeling which gave them wings,
she searched his face, his eyes. Dick had none of his father's
flightiness. He was level-headed, shrewd and with the conventions of his
times and his profession. If Dick spoke like this, with so much certitude
and so much sympathy, why then--She shrank from the conclusion with a
sinking heart. She became very quiet.

"Oh, she shouldn't have come to Little Beeding," she said in a low voice,
staring now upon the ground. It was to herself she spoke, but Dick
answered her, and his voice rose to a challenge.

"Why shouldn't she? Here she was born, here she was known. What else
should she do but come back to Little Beeding and hold her head high? I
respect her pride for doing it."

Here were reasons no doubt why Stella should come back; but they did not
include the reason why she had. Dick Hazlewood was well aware of it. He
had learnt it only the afternoon before when he was with her on the
river. But he thought it a reason too delicate, of too fine a gossamer to
be offered to the prosaic mind of his Aunt Margaret. With what ridicule
and disbelief she would rend it into tatters! Reasons so exquisit