‘Then why did you never tell me—?’

’That I hadn’t, after all’—­the boy took him up—­’remained such an idiot?  Just because I never dreamed you knew.  But I beg your pardon.  I only wanted to spare you.  And what I don’t now understand is how the deuce then for so long you’ve managed to keep bottled.’

Peter produced his explanation, but only after some delay and with a gravity not void of embarrassment.  ‘It was for your mother.’

‘Oh!’ said Lance.

’And that’s the great thing now—­since the murder is out.  I want a promise from you.  I mean’—­and Peter almost feverishly followed it up—­’a vow from you, solemn and such as you owe me here on the spot, that you’ll sacrifice anything rather than let her ever guess—­’

’That I’ve guessed?’—­Lance took it in.  ‘I see.’  He evidently after a moment had taken in much.  ’But what is it you’ve in mind that I may have a chance to sacrifice?’

‘Oh one has always something.’

Lance looked at him hard.  ‘Do you mean that you’ve had—?’ The look he received back, however, so put the question by that he found soon enough another.  ‘Are you really sure my mother doesn’t know?’

Peter, after renewed reflexion, was really sure.  ’If she does she’s too wonderful.’

‘But aren’t we all too wonderful?’

‘Yes,’ Peter granted—­’but in different ways.  The thing’s so desperately important because your father’s little public consists only, as you know then,’ Peter developed—­’well, of how many?’

‘First of all,’ the Master’s son risked, ’of himself.  And last of all too.  I don’t quite see of whom else.’

Peter had an approach to impatience.  ’Of your mother, I say—­always.’

Lance cast it all up.  ‘You absolutely feel that?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well then with yourself that makes three.’

’Oh me!’—­and Peter, with a wag of his kind old head, modestly excused himself.  The number’s at any rate small enough for any individual dropping out to be too dreadfully missed.  Therefore, to put it in a nutshell, take care, my boy—­that’s all—­that you’re not!’

‘I’ve got to keep on humbugging?’ Lance wailed.

’It’s just to warn you of the danger of your failing of that that I’ve seized this opportunity.’

‘And what do you regard in particular,’ the young man asked, ’as the danger?’

’Why this certainty:  that the moment your mother, who feels so strongly, should suspect your secret—­well,’ said Peter desperately, ‘the fat would be on the fire.’

Lance for a moment seemed to stare at the blaze.  ’She’d throw me over?’

‘She’d throw him over.’

‘And come round to us?’

Peter, before he answered, turned away.  ‘Come round to you.’  But he had said enough to indicate—­and, as he evidently trusted, to avert—­the horrid contingency.