“What are you doing here?”

“What have you been telling Nat?”

The questions were almost simultaneous.

“What have I been telling Natalie?” repeated the Reverend Orme.  “Well, what have I been telling her?”

Lewis fixed his eyes on Leighton’s face.

“Are you really going to marry Nat to that—­to that old man?”

The Reverend Orme shifted in his chair.

“Lewis,” he said, “I don’t know that it’s any of your business, but it is probable that Natalie will marry Dom Francisco.”

Lewis moved awkwardly from one foot to the other, but his eyes never shifted.

“Does Mother—­Mrs. Leighton know about this?  Does mammy?  Do they agree?”

“Young man,” answered Leighton, angrily, “they know that, as this world goes, Natalie is a lucky girl.  Dom Francisco is the wealthiest man in the province.  Look around you, sir.  Whom would you have her marry if not Dom Francisco?  Some pauper, I suppose.  Some foundling.”

Lewis’s cheeks burned red.

“You need not go so far as to marry her to a foundling,” he answered, “but you might be kinder to her than to marry her to—­to that old man.  You might choke her to death.”

The Reverend Orme leaped from his chair.

“Choke her to death, you—­you interloper!” He strode toward Lewis, his trembling hands held before him.

“Hold on!” cried Lewis, his eyes flaming.  “I’m no drunkard—­no cowardly Manoel.”

The Reverend Orme stopped in his stride.  A ghastly pallor came over his face.

“Manoel!” he whispered.  “What do you know about Manoel?”

Lewis’s heart sank low within him.  His unbroken silence of years had been instinctive.  Now, when it was too late, he suddenly realized that it had been the thread that held him to Nadir.  He had broken it.  Never more could he and the Reverend Orme sleep beneath the same roof, eat at the same table.  He saw it in the Reverend Orme’s face.

Leighton had staggered back to his chair and sat staring vacantly at the floor.  Lewis looked at his head, streaked with white, at his brow, terribly lined, and at his vacant, staring eyes.  He felt a sudden great pity for his foster-father, but pity had come too late.

“Sir,” he said, “I am going away.  I shall need some money.”  He felt no shame at asking for money.  For seven years he had tended Leighton’s goats—­tended them so well that in seven years they had increased sevenfold.

Leighton unlocked the drawer of his table and took out a small roll of bank-notes.  He tossed it on the table.  Lewis picked out two notes from the roll, and pushed the rest back.  He started toward the door.  Half-way he paused and turned to his foster-father.

“Good-by, sir.  I’m sorry I let you know that—­that I knew.”

Leighton did not look up.

“Good-by, Lewis,” he said quietly.