“It was never meant for anybody,” said Jerrold, the color coming back to his face and courage to his eyes.  “That letter was never sent by me to any woman.  It’s my writing, of course, I can’t deny that; but I never even meant it to go.  If it left that desk it must have been stolen.  I’ve been hunting high and low for it.  I knew that such a thing lying around loose would be the cause of mischief.  God! is that what all this fuss is about?” And he looked warily, yet with infinite anxiety, into his captain’s eyes.

“There is far more to it, as you well know, sir,” was the stern answer.  “For whom was this written, if not for her?  It won’t do to half clear her name.”

“Answer me this, Captain Armitage.  Do you mean that that letter has compromised Miss Renwick?—­that it is she whose name has been involved, and that it was of her that Chester meant to speak?”

“Certainly it was,—­and I too.”

There was an instant’s silence; then Jerrold began to laugh nervously: 

“Oh, well, I fancy it isn’t the first time the revered and respected captain has got away off the track.  All the same I do not mean to overlook his language to me; and I may say right now, Captain Armitage, that yours, too, calls for explanation.”

“You shall have it in short order, Mr. Jerrold, and the sooner you understand the situation the better.  So far as I am concerned, Miss Renwick needed no defender; but, thanks to your mysterious and unwarranted absence from quarters two very unlucky nights, and to other circumstances I have no need to name, and to your penchant for letter-writing of a most suggestive character, it is Miss Renwick whose name has been brought into question here at this post, and most prominently so.  In plain words, Mr. Jerrold, you who brought this trouble upon her by your own misconduct must clear her, no matter at whose expense, or—­”

“Or what?”

“I make no threats.  I prefer that you should make the proper explanations from a proper sense of what is due.”

“And suppose I say that no man is called upon to explain a situation which has been distorted and misrepresented by the evil imagination of his fellows?”

“Then I may have to wring the truth out of you,—­and will; but, for her sake, I want as little publicity as possible.  After this display on your part, I am not bound to show you any consideration whatever.  Understand this, however:  the array of evidence that you were feloniously inside Colonel Maynard’s quarters that night and at his cottage window last night is of such a character that a court would convict you unless your alibi was conclusive.  Leave the service you certainly shall, unless this whole thing is cleared up.”

“I never was anywhere near Colonel Maynard’s either last night or the other night I was absent.”

“You will have to prove it.  Mere denials won’t help you in the face of such evidence as we have that you were there the first time.”