In all this there was nothing remarkable, as between old friends, except the contrast with her bearing toward him during the past year.  He had expected that when Norrie Ford went finally free she would fulfil her contract, and fulfil it well; but he had not expected this instalment of graciousness in advance.  It set him to pondering, to looking in the mirror, to refining on that careful dressing which he had already made an art.  After all, a man in the fifties was young as long as he looked young, and according as one took the point of view.

Except when Ford’s affairs came directly under discussion he occupied, seemingly, a secondary place in their thoughts.  Miriam rarely spoke of him at all, and if Conquest brought up his name more frequently it was because his professional interest in the numerous “nice points” of the case was becoming keen.  He talked them over with her, partly because of his pleasure in the intelligence with which she grasped them, and partly because their intimacy deepened in proportion as the hope strengthened that Ford’s innocence would be proved.

It was June before Miriam heard from South America.  Two or three letters to Evie had already come, guardedly written, telling little more than the incidents of Ford’s voyage and arrival.  It was to Miriam he wrote what he actually had at heart.

* * * * *

“The great moment has come and gone,” she read to Conquest.  “I have seen Mr. Jarrott, and made a clean breast of everything.  It was harder than I expected, though I expected it would be pretty hard.  I think I felt sorrier for him than for myself, which is saying a good deal.  He not only takes it to heart, but feels it as a cut to his pride.  I can see that that thought is uppermost.  What he feels is not so much the fact that I deceived him as that I deceived him.  I can understand it, too.  In a country where there is such a lot of this sort of thing, he has never been touched by it before.  It has been a kind of boast that his men were always the genuine article.  If one of them is called Smith, it is because he is a Smith, and not a Vere de Vere in hiding.  But that isn’t all.  He took me into his family—­into his very heart.  He showed that, when I told him.  He tried not to, but he couldn’t help it.  I tell you it hurt—­me.  I won’t try to write about it.  I’ll tell you everything face to face, when I get up to the mark, if I ever do.  Apparently my letters hadn’t prepared him for the thing at all.  He thought it was to be something to do with Evie, though he might have known I wouldn’t have chucked up everything for that.  The worst of it is, he’s no good at seeing things all round.  He can’t take my point of view a bit.  It is impossible to explain the fix I was put in, because he can see nothing but the one fact that I pulled the wool over his eyes—­his eyes, that had never suffered sacrilege before.  I sympathize with him in that, and yet I think he might try to see that there’s something to be said on my side.  He doesn’t, and he never will—­which only hurts me the more.