“I’m afraid so,” returned the other gently.

“Do you know what he’s doing now?” she demanded.

“I understand he’s back at Manzanita.”

“He is.  And from what I can make out,” she added fiercely, “he is giving up his life to guarding Miss Van Arsdale from breaking her heart, as she will do, if she learns of Judge Enderby’s death—­Oh!” she cried, “I didn’t mean to say that!  You must forget that there was anything said.”

“No need.  I know all that story,” he said gravely.  “That is what I couldn’t forgive in Ban.  That he should have betrayed Miss Van Arsdale, his oldest friend.  That is the unpardonable treachery.”

“To save me,” said Io.

“Not even for that.  He owed more to her than to you.”

“I can’t believe that he did it!” she wailed.  “To use my letter to set spies on Cousin Billy and ruin him—­it isn’t Ban.  It isn’t!”

“He did it, and, when it was too late, he tried to stop it.”

“To stop it?” She looked her startled query at him.  “How do you know that?”

“Last week,” explained Edmonds, “Judge Enderby’s partner sent for me.  He had been going over some papers and had come upon a telegram from Banneker urging Enderby not to leave without seeing him.  The telegram must have been delivered very shortly after the Judge left for the train.”

“Telegram?  Why a telegram?  Wasn’t Ban in town?”

“No.  He was down in Jersey.  At The Retreat.”

“Wait!” gasped Io.  “At The Retreat!  Then my letter would have been forwarded to him there.  He couldn’t have got it at the same time that Cousin Billy got the one I sent him.”  She gripped Russell Edmonds’s wrists in fierce, strong hands.  “What if he hadn’t known in time?  What if, the moment he did know, he did his best to stop Cousin Billy from starting, with that telegram?” Suddenly the light died out of her face.  “But then how would that loathsome Mr. Ives have known that he was going, unless Ban betrayed him?”

“Easily enough,” returned the veteran.  “He had a report from his detectives, who had been watching Enderby for months....  Mrs. Eyre, I wish you’d give me a drink.  I feel shaky.”

She left him to give the order.  When she returned, they had both steadied down.  Carefully, and with growing conviction, they gathered the evidence into something like a coherent whole.  At the end, Io moaned: 

“The one thing I can’t bear is that Cousin Billy died, believing that of Ban.”

She threw herself upon the broad lounge, prone, her face buried in her arms.  The veteran of hundreds of fights, brave and blind, righteous and mistaken, crowned with fleeting victories, tainted with irremediable errors, stood silent, perplexed, mournful.  He walked slowly over to where the girl was stretched, and laid a clumsy, comforting hand on her shoulder.

“I wish you’d cry for me, too,” he said huskily.  “I’m too old.”