“Do not decide too hastily,” he said.  “Remember this.  Sir Wingrave Seton had once an opportunity of putting those letters to any use he may have thought fit.  He ignored it.  At that time, their tenor and contents might easily have been explained.  After all these years, that task would be far more difficult.  I say that no man has a right to keep a woman’s letters back from her years after any friendship there may have been between them is over.  It is not the action of an honorable man.  Sir Wingrave Seton has placed himself outside the pale of honorable men.”

“Your judgment,” Aynesworth answered quietly, “seems to me severe.  Sir Wingrave Seton has been the victim of peculiar circumstances.”

Barrington looked at his companion thoughtfully.  He was wondering exactly how much he knew.

“You defend him,” he remarked.  “That is because you have not yet found out what manner of man he is.”

“In any case,” Aynesworth answered, “I am not his judge.  Mr. Barrington,” he added, “You must forgive me if I remind you that this is a somewhat unprofitable discussion.”

A short silence followed.  With Barrington it did not appear to be a silence of irresolution.  He was leaning a little forward in his chair, and his head was resting upon his hand.  Of his companion he seemed for the moment to have become oblivious.  Aynesworth watched him curiously.  Was he looking back through the years, he wondered, to that one brief but lurid chapter of history; or was it his own future of which he was thinking,—­a future which, to the world, must seem so full of brilliant possibilities, and yet which he himself must feel to be so fatally and miserably insecure?

“Mr. Aynesworth,” he said at last, “I suppose from a crude point of view I am here to bribe you.”

Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.

“Is it worth while?” he asked a little wearily.  “I have tried to be civil—­but I have also tried to make you understand.  Your task is absolutely hopeless!”

“It should not be,” Barrington persisted.  “This is one of those rare cases, in which anything is justifiable.  Seton had his chance at the trial.  He chose to keep silence.  I do not praise him or blame him for that.  It was the only course open to a man of honor.  I maintain that his silence then binds him to silence for ever.  He has no right to ruin my life and the happiness of my wife by subtle threats, to hold those foolish letters over our heads, like a thunderbolt held ever in suspense.  You are ambitious, I believe, Mr. Aynesworth!  Get me those letters, and I will make you my secretary, find you a seat in Parliament, and anything else in reason that you will!”

Aynesworth rose to his feet.  He wished to intimate that, so far as he was concerned, the interview was at an end.

“Your proposition, Mr. Barrington,” he said, “is absolutely impossible.  In the first place, I have no idea where the letters in question are, and Sir Wingrave is never likely to suffer them to pass into my charge.”