’My business with him was confoundedly unpleasant.  I’m glad it’s over.  I wish I had known what I now do half a year ago.’

‘Let me hear what it is.’

‘You remember that I told you to be on your guard against Peak?’

Sidwell smiled faintly, and glanced at him, but made no answer.

‘I knew he wasn’t to be trusted,’ pursued her brother, with gloomy satisfaction.  ’And I had far better means of judging than father or you; but, of course, my suspicions were ungenerous and cynical.’

‘Will you come to the point?’ said Sidwell, in an irritated tone.

‘I think you read this article in The Critical?’ He approached and showed it to her.  ’We spoke of it once, a propos of M’Naughten’s book.’

She raised her eyes, and met his with a look of concern she could not disguise.

‘What of that?’

’Peak is the author of it.  It seems to have been written just about the time when I met him and brought him here as a visitor, and it was published after he had begun to edify you with his zeal for Christianity.’

She held out her hand.

‘You remember the tone of the thing?’ Buckland added.  ’I’ll leave it with you; but just glance at one or two of the passages I have marked.  The Anglicanism of their writer is decidedly “broad”, it seems to me.’

He moved apart and watched his sister as she bent over the pages.  There was silence for five minutes.  Seeing that Sidwell had ceased to read, he ejaculated, ‘Well?’

‘Has Mr. Peak admitted the authorship?’ she asked, slowly and distinctly.

‘Yes, and with a cool impudence I hardly expected.’

‘Do you mean that he has made no attempt to justify himself?’

‘None worth listening to.  Practically, he refused an explanation.’

Sidwell rested her forehead lightly upon the tips of her fingers; the periodical slipped from her lap and lay open on the floor.

‘How did you find this out?’

’In the simplest way.  Knowing perfectly well that I had only to get familiar with some of his old friends to obtain proof that he was an impostor, I followed up my acquaintance with Miss Moxey—­got hold of her brother—­called upon them.  Whilst I was there, a man named Malkin came in, and somehow or other he began talking of Peak.  I learned at once precisely what I expected, that Peak was known to all these people as a violent anti-Christian.  Malkin refused to believe the story of his going in for the Church—­it sounded to him a mere joke.  Then came out the fact that he had written this article.  They all knew about it.’

He saw a flush of shame upon Sidwell’s half-hidden face.  It gratified him.  He was resolved to let her taste all the bitterness of her folly.