Taffy took her hand.  “The money must be paid back, every penny of it.”

“Yes, dear.”

“How much?”

Humility kept a small account-book in the work-box beside her.  She opened the pages, but, seeing his outstretched hand, gave it obediently to Taffy, who took it to the window.

“Almost two hundred pounds.”  He knit his brows and began to drum with his fingers on the window-pane.  “And we must put the interest at five per cent. . . .  With my first in Moderations I might find some post as an usher in a small school. . . .  There’s an agency which puts you in the way of such things:  I must look up the address. . . .  We will leave this house, of course.”

“Must we?”

“Why of course we must.  We are living here by her favour.  A cottage will do—­only it must have four rooms, because of grandmother. . . .  I will step over and talk with Mendarva.  He may be able to give me a job.  It will keep me going, at any rate, until I hear from the agency.”

“You forget that I have over forty pounds a year—­or, rather, mother has.  The capital came from the sale of her farm, years ago.”

“Did it?” said Taffy grimly.  “You forget that I have never been told.  Well, that’s good, so far as it goes.  But now I’ll step over and see Mendarva.  If only I could catch this cowardly lie somewhere on my way!”

He kissed his mother, caught up his cap, and flung out of the house.  The sea breeze came humming across the sandhills.  He opened his lungs to it, and it was wine to his blood; he felt strong enough to slay dragons.  “But who could the liar be?  Not Lizzie herself, surely!  Not—­”

He pulled up short in a hollow of the towans.

“Not—­George?”

Treachery is a hideous thing; and to youth so incomprehensibly hideous that it darkens the sun.  Yet every trusting man must be betrayed.  That was one of the lessons of Christ’s life on earth.  It is the last and severest test; it kills many, morally, and no man who has once met and looked it in the face departs the same man, though he may be a stronger one.

“Not George?”

Taffy stood there so still that the rabbits crept out and, catching sight of him, paused in the mouths of their burrows.  When at length he moved on it was to take, not the path which wound inland to Mendarva’s, but the one which led straight over the higher moors to Carwithiel.

It was between one and two o’clock when he reached the house and asked to see Mr. and Mrs. George Vyell, They were not at home, the footman said; had left for Falmouth the evening before to join some friends on a yachting cruise.  Sir Harry was at home; was, indeed, lunching at that moment; but would no doubt be pleased to see Mr. Raymond.

Sir Harry had finished his lunch, and sat sipping his claret and tossing scraps of biscuits to the dogs.