"Perhaps it is because I am a man of the world, and have seen life on the seamy side, and know too well to what dark gulfs men can go down when the tempter urges them. Perhaps it is because of my experience that I suspect Bothwell Grahame."

"O, it is too horrible!" cried Hilda passionately. "I feel as if I must be mad myself, or in company with a madman. Bothwell Grahame – Bothwell, whom I remember when I was a child, the frank, generous-hearted lad, who went away to India to fight for his country, and who fought so well, and won such praise from his commanding officer – "

"Yes, Hilda," interrupted her brother, "and who, just when he seemed on the high road to fortune, threw up his chances, and abandoned his profession, to become an idler at home. That same Bothwell Grahame who, when he was asked what he did with himself during a long day at Plymouth, could give no account of his time. That same Bothwell, whose manner, from the hour of that catastrophe on the line, became gloomy and sullen – altered so completely that he seemed a new man. That same Bothwell, whom everybody in the neighbourhood of Bodmin suspects of a foul crime. That is the man whom I do not wish my sister to marry; albeit he is of the same flesh and blood as the woman whom I respect above all other women upon earth."

"I am glad you have remembered that – at last," said Hilda bitterly. "I am glad you have not quite forgotten that this murderer is Dora Wyllard's first cousin – brought up with her, taught by the same teachers, reared in the same way of thinking."

"God grant I may see reason to alter my opinion, Hilda," replied her brother. "Do you suppose that this suspicion of mine is not a source of pain and grief? But while I think as I do, can you wonder that I forbid any suggestion of a marriage, between my sister and Bothwell Grahame?"

"I have told you that I shall never be his wife," said Hilda. "Pray do not let us ever speak his name again."

They were at the entrance to The Spaniards by this time – not the great iron gates by the lodge, but a little wooden gate opening into the fine old garden, second only in beauty to the Penmorval parterres and terraces.

"Will you mind if I don't appear at dinner, Edward?" asked Hilda presently, as they went into the house. "I have a racking headache."

"Poor little girl!" said her brother tenderly. "You are looking the picture of misery. I am very sorry for you, my dear. I am very sorry for us all; for I fear there is calamity ahead for some of us. If Bothwell is wise he will go to the other end of the world, and take himself as far as possible out of the ken of his countrymen. If he should ask you for counsel, Hilda, that is the best advice you can give him."

"If he should ask me, that is just the very last counsel he would ever hear from my lips," answered Hilda indignantly. "I would entreat him to stand his ground – to live down this vile calumny – to wait the day when Providence will clear his name from this dark cloud. Such a day will come, I am sure of that."

She went to her own room, and shut herself up for the rest of the evening. The convenient excuse of a headache answered very well with the servants. She declined all refreshment – would not have this or that brought up on a tray to oblige Glossop, her own maid, who was deeply concerned at her young mistress's indisposition.

"I have a very bad headache," she said, "and all I want is to be left alone till to-morrow morning. Don't come near me, please, till you bring me my early cup of tea."

Glossop sighed and submitted. It was not often that Miss Heathcote was so wilful. Glossop was the coachman's daughter, had been born and brought up at The Spaniards, in old Squire Heathcote's time. She was a buxom young woman of five-and-thirty, and counted herself almost one of the family.

At last Hilda was alone. She locked her door, and began to pace her room, up and down, up and down, with her hands clasped upon her forehead, trying to think out her perplexities.

It was a fine spacious old bedroom, lighted by old-fashioned casement windows, looking two ways – one to the garden, one to that timber-belted lawn which might almost take rank as a park. There was a sitting-room adjoining, which was Hilda's own particular apartment, containing her books and piano, and the little table on which she painted china cups and saucers. Hilda had spent many a happy hour in these rooms, practising, studying, painting, dreaming over high-art needlework. But this evening she felt as if she could never again be happy, here or anywhere. A dense cloud of trouble had spread itself around her, enfolding her as a mantle of darkness, shutting out all the light of life.

The sun was sinking behind the tall chestnuts, in a sea of red and gold. Every leaflet of rose or myrtle that framed the casements showed distinct against that clear evening sky. Such a pretty room within, such a lovely landscape and sky without; and yet that young soul was full of darkness.

She had defended her lover with indignant firmness just now. She had protested his innocence – declared that this thing could not be true; and now in solitude she looked in the face of that cruel slander, and her faith began to waver.

What could be stranger or more suspicious than Bothwell's conduct this evening? With one breath he had avowed his love; with the next he had told her that he was unworthy to be her lover – that they two could never be man and wife.

Yes, it was true that he had changed of late – that he had become gloomy, despondent, fitful. His manner had been that of a man bowed down by the burden of some secret trouble. But was he for this reason to be suspected of a horrible crime? It was abominable of people to suspect him – most of all cruel and unworthy in her brother, who had known him from boyhood.

And then came the hideous suggestion, as if whispered in her ear by the fiend himself, "What if my brother should be right?" Her own experience of the world was of the slightest. Her chief knowledge of life was derived from the novels she had read. She had read of darkest deeds, of strange contradictions in human nature, mysterious workings of the human heart. Hitherto she had considered these lurid lights, these black shadows, as the figments of the romancer's fancy. Now she began to ask herself if they might not find their counterpart in fact.

She had read of gentlemanlike murderers – assassins of good bearing and polished manners – Eugene Aram, Count Fosco, and many more of the same school. What if Bothwell Grahame were such as these, hiding behind his frank and easy manner the violent passions of the criminal?

No, she would not believe it. She laughed the foul fiend to scorn. Her woman's instinct was truer than her brother's legal acumen, she told herself; and as for those Bodmin busybodies, she weighed their wisdom as lighter than thistledown.

"I would marry him to-morrow, if he asked me to be his wife," she said to herself. "I would stand beside him at the altar, before the face of all his slanderers. I should be proud to bear his name."

She blushed crimson at her own boldness, as she stood before her mirror, with hands clasped, in all the fervour of a vow; but from that moment her faith in Bothwell Grahame knew no wavering.

In an age when infidelity and scorn of religious ceremonial is very common among young men, Bothwell Grahame had always been steadfast to the Church, and to the good old-fashioned habits in which he had been brought up by his aunt. He was not a zealot, or an enthusiast; but he attended the services of his church with a fair regularity, and had a proper respect for the rector of his parish. Even in India, where men are apt to be less orthodox than at home, Bothwell had always been known as a good Churchman.

For the last year it had been his custom to receive the sacrament on the first Sunday of the month. He had risen early, and had walked across the dewy fields to the old parish church, and had knelt among the people who knew him, and had felt himself all the better for that mystic office, even when things were going far from well with him. There was much that was blameworthy in his life; yet he had not felt himself too base a creature to kneel among his fellow-sinners at the altar of the Sinner's Friend.

It was a shock, therefore, to receive a letter from the Rector on the last day of August, requesting him to absent himself from the communion service on the following Sunday, lest his presence before that altar should be a scandal to the other communicants.

"God forbid that I should condemn any man unheard," wrote the Rector; "but you can hardly be unaware of the terrible scandal attaching to your name. You have not come to me, as I hoped you would come, to explain the conduct which has given rise to that scandal. You have taken no step to set yourself right before your fellow-men. Can you wonder that your own silence has been in somewise your condemnation? My duty to my flock compels me to warn you that, until you have taken some steps to free your character from the shadow that now darkens it, you must not approach the altar of your parish church.

"If you will come to me, and open your heart to me, as the sinner should to his priest, I may be able to counsel and to help you. If you can clear yourself to me, I will be your advocate with your fellow-parishioners. – Always your friend,

"JOHN MONKHOUSE."

"He did wisely to write," said Bothwell, crushing the letter in his clenched fist. "If he had spoken such words as those to me, I believe I should have knocked him down, priest though he is."

He answered the Rector's letter within an hour after receiving it.

"I have nothing to confess," he wrote, "and that is why I have not gone to your confessional. The difficulties and perplexities of my life are such as could only be understood by a man of my own age and surroundings. They would be darker than Sanscrit to clerical gray hairs.

"Because I did not choose to answer questions which I could not answer without betraying the confidence of a friend, my wise fellow-parishioners have agreed to suspect me of murdering a girl whose face I never saw till after her death.

"I shall attend to receive the sacrament at the eight-o'clock service next Sunday, and I dare you to refuse to administer it. – I have the honour to be, yours, &c.

BOTHWELL GRAHAME."

He walked to Bodmin and delivered his letter at the Rectory door. He would not run the risk of an hour's delay. On his way home he overtook Hilda, near the gates of The Spaniards. She was very pale when they met, and she grew still paler as they shook hands.

After a word or two of greeting, they walked on side by side in silence.

"I wonder that you can consent to be seen with me," said Bothwell presently, after a farmer's wife had driven past them on her way from market. "You must have heard by this time what people think about me – your brother foremost among them, I believe, for he has given me the cut direct more than once since the inquest."

"I am sorry that he should be so ready to believe a lie," said Hilda, "for I know that this terrible slander is a lie."

"God bless you for those straight, strong words, Hilda!" exclaimed Bothwell fervently. "Yes, it is a lie. I am not a good man. I have taken one false step in my life, and the consequences of that mistake have been very heavy upon me. But I am not capable of the kind of wickedness which my Bodmin friends put down to me. I have not risen to the sublimer heights of crime. I am not up to throwing a fellow-creature out of a railway-carriage."

"Why did you not answer that man's questions at the inquest?" asked Hilda urgently, forgetting that she had hardly the right to demand his confidence. "That refusal of yours is the cause of all this misery. It seems such a foolish, obstinate act on your part."

"I daresay it does. But I could not do more or less than I did. To have answered that inquisitive cur's prying questions categorically would have been to injure a lady. As a man of honour, I was bound to run all risks rather than do that."

"I begin to understand," said Hilda, blushing crimson.

Why had she not guessed his secret long before this? she asked herself. The mystery that surrounded him was the mystery of some fatal love-affair. She was only a secondary person in his life. There was another who had been more to him than she, Hilda, could ever be – another to whom he was bound, for whom he was willing to sacrifice his own character. She felt a jealous pang at the mere thought of that unknown one.

"No, you can never understand," exclaimed Bothwell passionately. "You can never imagine the misery of a man who has bound himself by a fatal tie which chains him to one woman, long after his heart has gone out to another. I gave away my liberty while I was in India, Hilda: pledged myself to one who could give me but little in return for my faith and devotion. I dare not tell you the circumstances of that bondage – the fatality which led to that accursed engagement. I am desperate enough to break the tie, now that it is too late, now that I dare not offer myself to the girl I love, now that my name is blasted for ever. Yes, for ever. I know these narrow-minded rustics, and that to the end of my life I shall in their sight bear the brand of Cain. Here is a fine example of liberal feeling, Hilda."

He handed her the Rector's letter, crumpled in his angry grasp.

She read it slowly, tears welling up to her eyes as she read. How hardly the world was using this poor Bothwell! and the harder he was used the more she loved him.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I shall kneel before the altar of my God, as I have knelt before."

"There will at least be one communicant there who will not shrink from you," said Hilda softly. "We will kneel side by side, if you like."

"God bless you, my darling. God help me to clear my name from this foul stain which fools have cast upon it; and then a day may come when you and I may kneel before that altar, side by side, and I may be thrice blest in winning you for my wife."

There was a brief silence before Hilda murmured, "You have told me that you are bound to another."

"Yes, and I have told you that I will break through that bondage."

"Can you do so with honour?"

"Yes. It will be more honourable to cancel my vow than to keep it; and when I am a free man – when this shadow has been cleared from my name – will you take me for your husband, Hilda – a man with his way to make in the world, but needing only such an inducement as your love to undertake the labours of a modern Hercules? Will you have me, Hilda, when I am my own man again?"

"I will," answered Hilda softly, yet with a firm faith that thrilled him. "I shall have to brave my brother's anger, perhaps; but I will not wait till your name is cleared from this slander. Of what use is fair-weather love? It is in storm and cloud that a woman's faith should be firmest. When you have freed yourself from that old tie which has grown a weariness to you, when you can come to me in all truth and honour, my heart shall answer frankly and fully, Bothwell. And then you can tell all our friends that we are engaged. It may be a very long engagement, perhaps. I shall not be of age till two years hence, you know; but that does not matter. People will know at least that I do not suspect you of a crime."

"My noble girl!" he cried, beside himself with joy.

Never had he thought to find any woman so frank, so generous, so brave. He would have caught her in his arms, pressed her to his passionately beating heart, but she drew herself away from him with a decisive gesture.

"Not until you are free, Bothwell; not until you can tell me that the old tie is broken. Till then we can be only friends."

"Be it so," he answered submissively. "Your friendship is worth more to me than the love of other women. Will you walk to Penmorval with me? Dora has been wondering at your desertion."

"Not to-day. Please tell Dora that I have not been very well. I will go to see her to-morrow. Good-bye, Bothwell."

"Good-bye, my beloved."

They parted at the gate of The Spaniards.