“Ah!” His brows contracted.  “Will you forgive me, Juliet?  I’ve had—­an infernal time.”

“Yes.  I know,” she said gently.

“No, dear, you don’t know.  How could you?  Your life hasn’t been one perpetual struggle against overwhelming odds like mine.”  He paused.  “Look here, darling!  I’m rather a fool to-night.  I can’t explain things.  But you’ve been very wonderful to me.  You’ve lighted a torch in the dark.  I kept away because—­it didn’t seem fair to you to do anything else.  You were back in your own inner circle, and I was miles outside.  And you never wanted to be bound.  When I saw you with—­Lord Saltash—­I knew why.”

“My dear!” she said.  “You didn’t imagine I was in love with Saltash surely!”

“No—­no!” he said.  “I knew you weren’t.  And yet—­somehow—­I felt you were nearer to his world than mine.  I realized it more and more as the days went on.  And my boy was ill—­I couldn’t leave him.  Juliet—­” a hint of entreaty crept into his voice—­“I can’t explain.  But somehow here on my own ground it’s—­different.  I feel you belong to me here.  I know I can win and hold you.  But there—­there—­you are—­leagues and leagues above me—­far out of reach.”

“Oh, Dick!” she said.  “I thought you had more sense!  Don’t you realize—­yet—­that your world is the world I want to be in?  I want to forget that other world—­just to blot it out of my life—­if only you will make that possible.”

“If I will!” he said, with a deep breath.  And then suddenly he took her face between his hands, looking closely into her eyes.  “Don’t you care about—­all the horrible things I’ve told you?” he said.  “Does it make no difference at all to you?”

She was still smiling—­a tremendous smile.  “It doesn’t seem much like it, does it?” she said.  “I’m not such a saint myself, Dick.  Moreover, I knew about—­some things—­before I came.”

“What things?” he said.

She made a very winning gesture towards him.  “Don’t think me a Paul Pry, dear!  But I couldn’t help knowing—­ages ago—­what made the squire—­so fond of you.”

“Juliet!” He gazed at her.  “How on earth did you find out?”

She coloured deeply under his look.  “You—­are rather alike—­in some ways,” she said.  “It was partly that and partly being—­well, rather interested in you, I suppose.  And Mrs. Rickett told me as much of your family history as she knew before I ever met you.  So, you see, I didn’t have much to fill in.”

“And still it makes no difference?” he said.

She shook her head.  “None whatever.  I’m just glad for your sake that the man you hated so was not your father.  But I think you go rather far, Dick, when you say you killed him.”

The hard onyx glitter shone again in his eyes.  “No, it was not an exaggeration,” he said.  “I was a murderer that night.  I meant him to go to his death.  When he was dead I was glad.  He had tortured the only being I loved on earth.  I believed he was my father for quite a long time after—­till the squire came home, and I told him the whole story.  Then—­in an impulsive moment—­he told me the truth.  He cared about my mother’s death—­cared badly.  They would have been married by that time if her husband hadn’t turned up again.  It was two lives spoilt.”