‘Still,’ urged Sidwell, ’you must inevitably regard him as ignoble —­as guilty of base deceit.  I must hide nothing from you, having told so much.  Have you heard from anyone about his early life?’

‘Your mother told me some old stories.’

Sidwell made an impatient gesture.  In words of force and ardour, such as never before had been at her command, she related all she knew of Godwin’s history prior to his settling at Exeter, and depicted the mood, the impulses, which, by his own confession, had led to that strange enterprise.  Only by long exercise of an impassioned imagination could she thus thoroughly have identified herself with a life so remote from her own.  Peak’s pleading for himself was scarcely more impressive.  In listening, Sylvia understood how completely Sidwell had cast off the beliefs for which her ordinary conversation seemed still to betray a tenderness.

‘I know,’ the speaker concluded, ’that he cannot in that first hour have come to regard me with a feeling strong enough to determine what he then undertook.  It was not I as an individual, but all of us here, and the world we represented.  Afterwards, he persuaded himself that he had felt love for me from the beginning.  And I, I tried to believe it—­because I wished it true; for his sake, and for my own.  However it was, I could not harden my heart against him.  A thousand considerations forbade me to allow him further hope; but I refused to listen—­no, I could not listen.  I said I would remain true to him.  He went away to take up his old pursuits, and if possible to make a position for himself.  It was to be our secret.  And in spite of everything.  I hoped for the future.’

Silence followed, and Sidwell seemed to lose herself in distressful thought.

‘And now,’ asked her friend, ‘what has come to pass?’

‘Do you know that Miss Moxey is dead?’

‘I haven’t heard of it.’

’She is dead, and has left Mr. Peak a fortune.—­His letter of today tells me this.  And at the same time he claims my promise.’

Their eyes met.  Sylvia still had the air of meditating a most interesting problem.  Impossible to decide from her countenance how she regarded Sidwell’s position.

‘But why in the world,’ she asked, ’should Marcella Moxey have left her money to Mr. Peak?’

‘They were friends,’ was the quick reply.  ’She knew all that had befallen him, and wished to smooth his path.’

Sylvia put several more questions, and to all of them Sidwell replied with a peculiar decision, as though bent on making it clear that there was nothing remarkable in this fact of the bequest.  The motive which impelled her was obscure even to her own mind, for ever since receiving the letter she had suffered harassing doubts where now she affected to have none.  ‘She knew, then,’ was Sylvia’s last inquiry, ‘of the relations between you and Mr. Peak?’

‘I am not sure—­but I think so.  Yes, I think she must have known.’