for your scant regard to your oath in the court-martial, for your
attempt to combat an imagined villainy by a real villainy. But I
realise what you have suffered, and in that suffering lies the
punishment you fully deserve for not having taken the straight
course, for not having taxed me there and then with the thing that
you suspected."

"The gentleman is about to lecture me upon morals, Sylvia." But
Tremayne let pass the interruption.

"It is quite true that I was in Una's room while you were killing
Samoval. But I was not alone with her, as you have so rashly
assumed. Her brother Richard was there, and it was on his behalf
that I was present. She had been hiding him for a fortnight. She
begged me, as Dick's friend and her own, to save him; and I
undertook to do so. I climbed to her room to assist him to descend
by the rope ladder you saw, because he was wounded and could not
climb without assistance. At the gates I had the curricle waiting
in which I had driven up. In this I was to have taken him on board
a ship that was leaving that night for England, having made
arrangements with her captain. You should have seen, had you
reflected, that - as I told the court - had I been coming to a
clandestine meeting, I should hardly have driven up in so open a
fashion, and left the curricle to wait for me at the gates.

"The death of Samoval and my own arrest thwarted our plans and
prevented Dick's escape. That is the truth. Now that you have it I
hope you like it, and I hope that you thoroughly relish your own
behaviour in the matter."