“Mayn’t I know what’s happened at Threlfall?  Your mother told me—­you had heard.”

He pulled himself together, while many things he would rather have forgotten rushed back upon him.

“We’re no forrader!” he said impatiently.  “I don’t believe we shall get a brass farthing out of Melrose, if you ask me; at least without going to law and making a scandal; partly because he’s Melrose, and that sort—­sooner die than climb down, and the rest of it—­but mostly—­”

He broke off.

“Mostly?” repeated Lydia.

“I don’t know whether I’d better go on.  Faversham’s a friend of yours.”

Tatham looked down upon her, his blunt features reddening.

“Not so much a friend that I can’t hear the truth about him,” said Lydia, smiling rather faintly.  “What do you accuse him of?”

He hesitated a moment; then the inner heat gathered, and flashed out.  Wasn’t it best to be frank?—­best for her, best for himself?

“Don’t you think it looks pretty black?” he asked her, breathing quick; “there he is, getting round an old man, and plotting for money he’s no right to!  Wouldn’t you have thought that any decent fellow would sooner break stones than take the money that ought to have been that girl’s—­that at least he’d have said to Melrose ’provide for her first—­your own child—­and then do what you like for me.’  Wouldn’t that have been the honest thing to do?  But I went to him yesterday—­told him the story—­he promised to look into it—­and to use his influence.  We sent him a statement in proper form, a few hours later.  It’s horrible what those two have suffered!  And then, to-day—­it’s too dark for you to read his precious letter, but if you really don’t mind, I’ll tell you the gist of it.”

He summarized it—­quite fairly—­yet with a contempt he did not try to conceal.  The girl at his side, muffled in a blue cloak, with a dark hood framing the pale gold of the hair, and the delicate curves of the face, listened in silence.  At the end she said: 

“Tell me on what grounds you think Mr. Melrose has left his property to Mr. Faversham?”

“Everybody believes it!  My Carlisle lawyers whom I saw this morning are convinced of it.  Melrose is said to have spoken quite frankly about it to many persons.”

“Not very strong evidence on which to condemn a man so utterly as you condemn him,” said Lydia, with sudden emotion.  “Think of the difficulty of his position!  May he not be honestly trying to steer his way?  And may not we all be doing our best to make his task impossible, putting the worst construction—­the very worst!—­on everything he does?”

There was silence a moment.  Tatham and Lydia were looking into each other’s faces; the girl’s soul, wounded and fluttering, was in her eyes.  Tatham felt a sudden and choking sense of catastrophe.  Their house of cards had fallen about them, and his stubborn hopes with it.  She, with her high standards, could not possibly defend—­could not possibly plead—­for a man who was behaving so shabbily, so dishonourably, except—­for one reason!  He leapt indignantly at certainty; although it was a certainty that tortured him.