have succeeded I
almost wish the thought had never occurred to me."

"Pray, pray don't keep me in suspense, Mrs. Wade."

"Northway did _not_ make his discovery by chance. You were betrayed to
him--by a seeming friend."

Denzil looked steadily at her.

"A friend?--He has deceived you. Only one acquaintance of mine knew."

"Mr. Glazzard. It was he who laid a plot for your downfall."

Quarrier moved impatiently.

"Mrs. Wade, you are being played upon by this scoundrel. There is no
end to his contrivances."

"No, he has told me the truth," she pursued, with agitated voice.
"Listen to the story, first of all."

She related to him, in accurate detail, all that had passed between
Northway and Mr. Marks.

"And Mr. Marks was Mr. Glazzard, undoubtedly. His description tallies
exactly."

Denzil broke out indignantly.

"The whole thing is a fabrication I not only _won't_ believe it, but
simply _can't_. You say that you have suspected this?"

"I have--from the moment when Lilian told me that Mr. Glazzard knew."

"That's astounding!--Then why should you have desired to be on friendly
terms with the Glazzards?"

Mrs. Wade sank her eyes.

"I hoped," she made answer, "to find out something. I had only in view
to serve you."

"You have deluded yourself, and been deluded, in the strangest way.
Now, I will give you one reason (a very odd, but a very satisfactory
one) why it is impossible to believe Glazzard guilty of such
baseness--setting aside the obvious fact that he had no motive. He goes
in for modelling in clay, and for some time he has been busy on a very
fine head. What head do you think?--That of Judas Iscariot."

He laughed.

"Now, a man guilty of abominable treachery would not choose for an
artistic subject the image of an arch-traitor."

Mrs. Wade smiled strangely as she listened to his scornful
demonstration.

"You have given me," she said, "a most important piece of evidence in
support of Northway's story."

Denzil was ill at ease. He could not dismiss this lady with contempt.
Impossible that he should not have learnt by this time the meaning of
her perpetual assiduity on his behalf; the old friendliness (never very
warm) had changed to a compassion which troubled him. Her image revived
such painful memories that he would have welcomed any event which put
her finally at a distance from him The Polterham scandal, though not
yet dead, had never come to his ears; had he known it, he could
scarcely