For the moment I forgot this man’s kindness to me.  I looked at him with a shudder.

“If you are in earnest,” I said, “I trust that you were unsuccessful.”

I fancied that there was that in his glance which suggested the St. Bernard looking down on the terrier, and I chafed at it.

“It would have been better for you,” he said, grimly, “had my search met with better result.”

“For me?” I repeated.

“For you!  Yes!  The man came to see you.  If he had been alive you might have been in his toils by now.  He was a very cunning person, and those who sent him were devils.”

“How do you know these things?” I asked, amazed.

“From the letters which I ripped from his coat,” he answered.

“He came to Braster to see me, then?” I exclaimed.

“Precisely.”

“And the letters which you took from him—­were they addressed to me?”

“They were.”

I was getting angry, but Ray remained imperturbable.

“I think,” I said, “you will admit that I have a right to them.”

“Not a shadow of a doubt of it,” he answered.  “In fact, it was so obvious that I destroyed them.”

“Destroyed my letters!”

“Precisely!  I chose that course rather than allow them to fall into your hands.”

“You admit, then,” I said, “that I had a right to them.”

“Indubitably.  But they do not exist.”

“You read them, without doubt.  You can acquaint me with their contents.”

“Some day,” he said, “I probably shall.  But not yet.  Believe me or not, as you choose, but there are certain positions in which ignorance is the only possible safe state.  You are in such a position at the present moment.”

“Are you,” I asked, “my moral guardian?”

“I have at least,” he said, “incurred certain responsibilities on your behalf.  You could no longer hold your present post and be in communication with the sender of those letters.”

My anger died away despite myself.  The man’s strength and honesty of purpose were things which I could not bring myself to doubt.  I continued my breakfast in silence.

“By-the-bye,” he remarked presently, “you, too, my young friend, were out early this morning.”

“I was writing all night,” I answered.  “I had documents to put in the safe.”

He shot a quick searching glance at me.

“You have been to the safe this morning, then?”

I answered him with a composure at which I inwardly marvelled.

“Certainly!  It was the object of my coming here.”

“You entered the room with the Duke.  Was he in the study at that hour?”

“No, I went upstairs to him.  I had a question to ask.”

“And you have met Lord Blenavon?  What do you think of him?”

“We were at Magdalen together for a term,” I answered.  “He was good enough to remember me.”