Thus, the old gentleman was useful to Sally, during several days, as an explanation of her tearfulness.  She felt thankful to him for the shelter he was affording her, but often said to herself, “It’s a shame to let him see in my cryings a reproach—­as if he could ever do anything that could make me reproach him!  But I can’t confess; I’ve got to go on using him for a pretext, he’s the only one I’ve got in the world, and I do need one so much.”

As soon as Sellers was out again, and found that stacks of money had been placed in bank for him and Hawkins by the Yankee, he said, “Now we’ll soon see who’s the Claimant and who’s the Authentic.  I’ll just go over there and warm up that House of Lords.”  During the next few days he and his wife were so busy with preparations for the voyage that Sally had all the privacy she needed, and all the chance to cry that was good for her.  Then the old pair left for New York—­and England.

Sally had also had a chance to do another thing.  That was, to make up her mind that life was not worth living upon the present terms.  If she must give up her impostor and die; doubtless she must submit; but might she not lay her whole case before some disinterested person, first, and see if there wasn’t perhaps some saving way out of the matter?  She turned this idea over in her mind a good deal.  In her first visit with Hawkins after her parents were gone, the talk fell upon Tracy, and she was impelled to set her case before the statesman and take his counsel.  So she poured out her heart, and he listened with painful solicitude.  She concluded, pleadingly, with—­

“Don’t tell me he is an impostor.  I suppose he is, but doesn’t it look to you as if he isn’t?  You are cool, you know, and outside; and so, maybe it can look to you as if he isn’t one, when it can’t to me.  Doesn’t it look to you as if he isn’t?  Couldn’t you—­can’t it look to you that way—­for—­for my sake?”

The poor man was troubled, but he felt obliged to keep in the neighborhood of the truth.  He fought around the present detail a little while, then gave it up and said he couldn’t really see his way to clearing Tracy.

“No,” he said, “the truth is, he’s an impostor.”

“That is, you—­you feel a little certain, but not entirely—­oh, not entirely, Mr. Hawkins!”

“It’s a pity to have to say it—­I do hate to say it, but I don’t think anything about it, I know he’s an impostor.”

“Oh, now, Mr. Hawkins, you can’t go that far.  A body can’t really know it, you know.  It isn’t proved that he’s not what he says he is.”

Should he come out and make a clean breast of the whole wretched business?  Yes—­at least the most of it—­it ought to be done.  So he set his teeth and went at the matter with determination, but purposing to spare the girl one pain—­that of knowing that Tracy was a criminal.

“Now I am going to tell you a plain tale; one not pleasant for me to tell or for you to hear, but we’ve got to stand it.  I know all about that fellow; and I know he is no earl’s son.”