Sir James shrugged his shoulders, with the smile of one who is determined to keep his spirits up.

“Well, my dear Marsham, you have your battle cut out for you!  Don’t delay it.  Where is Lady Lucy?”

“In town.”

“Can’t you devise some excuse that will take you back to her early to-morrow morning?”

Marsham thought over it.  Easy enough, if only the engagement were announced!  But both agreed that silence was imperative.  Whatever chance there might be with Lady Lucy would be entirely destroyed were the matter made public before her son had consulted her.

“Everybody here is on the tiptoe of expectation,” said Sir James.  “But that you know; you must face it somehow.  Invent a letter from Ferrier—­some party contretemps—­anything!—­I’ll help you through.  And if you see your mother in the morning, I will turn up in the afternoon.”

The two men paused.  They were standing together—­in conference; but each was conscious of a background of hurrying thoughts that had so far been hardly expressed at all.

Marsham suddenly broke out: 

“Sir James!—­I know you thought there were excuses—­almost justification—­for what that poor creature did.  I was a boy of fifteen at the time you made your famous speech, and I only know it by report.  You spoke, of course, as an advocate—­but I have heard it said—­that you expressed your own personal belief.  Wherever the case is discussed, there are still—­as you know—­two opinions—­one more merciful than the other.  If the line you took was not merely professional; if you personally believed your own case; can you give me some of the arguments—­you were probably unable to state them all in court—­that convinced you?  Let me have something wherewith to meet my mother.  She won’t look at this altogether from the worldly point of view.  She will have a standard of her own.  Merely to belittle the thing, as long past and forgotten, won’t help me.  But if I could awaken her pity!—­if you could give me the wherewithal—­”

Sir James turned away.  He walked to the window and stood there a minute, his face invisible.  When he returned, his pallor betrayed what his steady and dignified composure would otherwise have concealed.

“I can tell you what Mrs. Sparling told me—­in prison—­with the accents of a dying woman—­what I believed then—­what I believe now.—­Moreover, I have some comparatively recent confirmation of this belief.—­But this is too public!”—­he looked round the library—­“we might be disturbed.  Come to my room to-night.  I shall go up early, on the plea of letters.  I always carry with me—­certain documents.  For her child’s sake, I will show them to you.”

At the last words the voice of the speaker, rich in every tender and tragic note, no less than in those of irony or invective, wavered for the first time.  He stooped abruptly, took up the book he had been reading, and left the room.