"So!" he cried. "Would that be why she refused to see me? Did she
conceive that I went perhaps to plead? Could she think that? Could
she?"

He crossed to the fireplace and stirred the logs with his boot angrily.
"Oh! 'Twere too unworthy. Yet of a certainty 'tis her doing, this."

"What shall you do?" insisted Lionel, unable to repress the question
that was uppermost in his mind; and his voice shook.

"Do?" Sir Oliver looked at him over his shoulder. "Prick this bubble,
by heaven! Make an end of it for them, confound them and cover them
with shame."

He said it roughly, angrily, and Lionel recoiled, deeming that roughness
and anger aimed at himself. He sank into a chair, his knees loosened by
his sudden fear. So it seemed that he had had more than cause for his
apprehensions. This brother of his who boasted such affection for him
was not equal to bearing this matter through. And yet the thing was so
unlike Oliver that a doubt still lingered with him.

"You...you will tell them the truth?" he said, in small, quavering
voice.

Sir Oliver turned and considered him more attentively.

"A God's name, Lal, what's in thy mind now?" he asked, almost roughly.
"Tell them the truth? Why, of course--but only as it concerns myself.
You're not supposing that I shall tell them it was you? You'll not be