“I wish you would tell me,” he said, in more humane tones, “how you came to do it.  I would like to understand, and I can’t, for the life of me.  You must have had some reason.  Did I do anything, unknowing—­”

She shook her head hopelessly.

“No.  You were only kind and good, as you would have been to anyone.”

“Kind and good?  Rubbish!  It was you—­all of you—­who were kind and good.  Oh, I don’t forget what you did for me, and never shall.  I feel” —­it was the very feeling that had so oppressed him in the case of the lady at Sandridge—­“under a load of obligation to you that I can never hope to discharge.  But still—­but still—­though I trust I showed some of the gratitude I felt—­I cannot remember how I came to give you the idea—­I must have done something, I suppose; one is a blundering fool without knowing it—­”

“No,” she protested—­“no, no!  It was my own idea entirely.”

“But I can’t reconcile that with your character, Miss Pennycuick.”

“Nor can I,” she laughed bitterly.

“There’s a mystery somewhere.  Did anybody tell you anything?  Did Miss Frances put constructions on innocent appearances?  Did—­”

“No,” Mary resolutely stopped him.  “It is good of you to try to make excuses, but there is no excuse for me—­none.  Francie only said what she knew.  I let them believe you were my lover; I am twenty-seven —­I never had one—­and—­and—­oh, I thought that, at least, you might be mine when you were dead!  I did not mean to be a liar, as you called me—­yes, that is the right word—­”

“Forgive me for using it,” he muttered.  “You do not realise at first that you are lying, when you only act lies and don’t speak them.  And I did think that perhaps, that possibly—­of course, I was ridiculously wrong—­it was atrocious, unforgivable—­I don’t ask you to forgive me —­I don’t want you to—­but those dear days when our little boy—­oh, you know!—­and when you kissed me that night beside his grave—­”

“What!” A lightning change came over the young man, as if the word had been an electric current suddenly shot into him.  “Kissed you?”

“It was nothing; you did not know you did it—­”

“But here—­hold on—­this is serious.  Did I kiss you?  You are sure you are not dreaming?”

“I would not be very likely to dream that,” she said, with a strange smile.  “But of course it was only—­at such a time—­as you would have kissed your sister—­anybody.  Your very forgetting it shows that.”

But a dim memory was awakening in him, frightfully perturbing to his mind.

“I kissed you!” he repeated, and slowly realised that he had been that consummate ass.  The poor baby’s dead hand had retained its old power to entrap a simpleton unawares.

Well, simpleton or not, Guthrie Carey was Guthrie Carey—­ sailor-bred, accustomed to meet vital emergencies with boldness and promptness; accustomed also to take his own views of what was a man’s part at such times.  While she implored him to say no more about that kiss, crying shame upon herself for mentioning it, he sat in silence, thinking hard.  As soon as she had done, he spoke: