“Oh, I like her—­I like her!” cried Oswyn, with a short laugh.  Then he went on more seriously, half-apologetically, as though the other might have found his mirth ill-timed:  “My dear friend, it is a great honour, a great pleasure, you give me.  I, too, have no belongings, no interests; this might be a great one.  I never thought of it before, I must admit; but I will adopt her.  She shall live with me, if it’s necessary.  Only, ah! let us hope still that this may not be necessary, that it is premature.”

The other held up a thin hand deprecatingly.

“Ah, don’t let us fence with the truth.  I have always seen it coming, and why should I lie about it, now that it is come?  When one is as tired as I am, there is only one other thing which happens—­one dies.  You don’t suppose I should have sent for you like this if it hadn’t been so?”

He lay very still for a moment or two with his eyes closed, as if the effort which speech cost him was considerable.  At last he said abruptly: 

“There are things you should know; she is Lightmark’s child.”

Oswyn had seated himself on a low chair by the bed; he kept his head averted, as does a priest who hears confessions; and he gazed with absent eyes at the fire which burned sulkily, at the row of medicine-bottles on the mantelpiece, at all the dreary paraphernalia of a sick-room.

“Yes, she is Lightmark’s child,” continued Rainham; “and the mother was that girl whom we found two years ago—­do you remember?—­the night of your first visit here outside the gates.  She called herself Mrs. Crichton.  It’s a miserable story; I only discovered it quite recently.”

Oswyn drew in a deep breath, which sounded like a sigh in the strangely still room.

It did not so much suggest surprise as the indefinable relief which a man feels when accident permits him to express cognizance of some fact of which he has long been inwardly assured.

“I knew that long ago,” he said at last.  “I suspected it when I first saw the girl; but I said nothing to you at the time; perhaps I was wrong.  Afterwards, when we knew each other better, there seemed no occasion; I had almost forgotten the episode.”

“Yes,” went on the other faintly; “we have all made mistakes—­I more than most folk, perhaps.”

Then he asked suddenly: 

“Had you any motive, any reason for your suspicion?”

“It was the name Crichton—­the man’s pseudonym on the Outcry.  It flashed across me then that she was after Lightmark.  He was just severing his connection with the paper.  He had always kept it very close, and I dare say I was one of the few persons who were in the secret.  That is why, at the bottom of his heart, he is afraid of me—­afraid that I shall bring it up.  It’s the one thing he is ashamed of.”

“I see, I see,” cried Rainham wearily; “the wretched fellow!”

“Dear man, why should we think of him?” broke in Oswyn; “he isn’t worth it.  Now of all seasons can’t we find a topic less unsavoury?”