“That is not now necessary,” said she very gravely.  He misunderstood her, of course, knowing nothing of the enlightenment that yesterday had come to her.

“I think..., nay, I know that you do him an injustice,” said he.

Her hazel eyes continued to regard him.

“If you will deliver the message, it may enable me to judge.”

To him, this was confusing.  He did not immediately answer.  He found that he had not sufficiently considered the terms he should employ, and the matter, after all, was of an exceeding delicacy, demanding delicate handling.  It was not so much that he was concerned to deliver a message as to render it a vehicle by which to plead his own cause.  Lord Julian, well versed in the lore of womankind and usually at his ease with ladies of the beau-monde, found himself oddly constrained before this frank and unsophisticated niece of a colonial planter.

They moved on in silence and as if by common consent towards the brilliant sunshine where the pergola was intersected by the avenue leading upwards to the house.  Across this patch of light fluttered a gorgeous butterfly, that was like black and scarlet velvet and large as a man’s hand.  His lordship’s brooding eyes followed it out of sight before he answered.

“It is not easy.  Stab me, it is not.  He was a man who deserved well.  And amongst us we have marred his chances:  your uncle, because he could not forget his rancour; you, because... because having told him that in the King’s service he would find his redemption of what was past, you would not afterwards admit to him that he was so redeemed.  And this, although concern to rescue you was the chief motive of his embracing that same service.”

She had turned her shoulder to him so that he should not see her face.

“I know.  I know now,” she said softly.  Then after a pause she added the question:  “And you?  What part has your lordship had in this — that you should incriminate yourself with us?”

“My part?” Again he hesitated, then plunged recklessly on, as men do when determined to perform a thing they fear.  “If I understood him aright, if he understood aright, himself, my part, though entirely passive, was none the less effective.  I implore you to observe that I but report his own words.  I say nothing for myself.”  His lordship’s unusual nervousness was steadily increasing.  “He thought, then — so he told me — that my presence here had contributed to his inability to redeem himself in your sight; and unless he were so redeemed, then was redemption nothing.”

She faced him fully, a frown of perplexity bringing her brows together above her troubled eyes.

“He thought that you had contributed?” she echoed.  It was clear she asked for enlightenment.  He plunged on to afford it her, his glance a little scared, his cheeks flushing.