But Kitty went on triumphantly.  There was nothing to prove it, nothing to show that this knowing young man knew all the facts when he first undertook to work for Miss Harden.  So far from concealing the facts later on, he had, to her certain knowledge, written at once to Mr. Jewdwine advising him to buy in the library, literally over old Rickman’s head.  That old Rickman’s action had not followed on young Rickman’s visit to town was sufficiently proved by the dates.  The letter to Mr. Pilkington enclosing the cheque for twelve hundred had been written and posted at least twelve hours before his arrival.  What the evidence did prove was that he had moved heaven and earth to make his father withdraw from his bargain.

Mr. Schofield coldly replied that the better half of Miss Palliser’s arguments rested on the statements of the young man himself, to which he was hardly inclined to attach so much importance as she did.  If his main assertion was correct, that he had written to inform Mr. Jewdwine of the facts, it was a little odd, to say the least of it, that Mr. Jewdwine made no mention of having received that letter.  And that he had not received it might be fairly inferred from the discrepancy between young Rickman’s exaggerated account of the value and Mr. Jewdwine’s more moderate estimate.

Lucia and Kitty first looked at each other, and then away to opposite corners of the room.  And at that moment Kitty was certain, while Lucia doubted; for Kitty went by the logic of the evidence and Lucia by the intuition which was one with her desire.  Surely it was more likely that Rickman had never written to Horace than that Horace should have failed her, if he knew?  Meanwhile the cold legal voice went on to shatter the last point in Kitty’s defence, observing that if Rickman had not had time to get up to town before his father wrote to Mr. Pilkington he had had plenty of time to telegraph.  He added that the young man’s moral character need not concern them now.  Whatever might be thought of his conduct it was not actionable.  And to the legal mind what was not actionable was irrelevant.

But for Lucia, to whom at the moment material things were unrealities, the burning question was the honesty or dishonesty of Rickman; for it involved the loyalty or disloyalty, or rather, the ardour or the indifference of Horace.  If Rickman were cleared of the grosser guilt, her cousin was, on a certain minor count, condemned; and there could be no doubt which of the two she was the more anxious to acquit.

“I suppose you’ll see him if he calls?” asked Kitty when they were alone.

“See who?”

“Mr. Savage Keith Rickman.”  Even in the midst of their misery Kitty could not forbear a smile.

But for once Lucia was inaccessible to the humour of the name.

“Of course I shall see him,” she said gravely.

CHAPTER XXXVI