He paused, drew himself from his father’s arms, and glanced almost solemnly out of the window.  “I swear that I will henceforth act as if she were still alive and watching me.”

There was strange intensity in his manner.  Mr. Sutherland regarded him with amazement.  He had seen him in every mood natural to a reckless man, but never in so serious a one, never with a look of awe or purpose in his face.  It gave him quite a new idea of Frederick.

“Yes,” the young man went on, raising his right hand, but not removing his eyes from the distant prospect on which they were fixed, “I swear that I will henceforth do nothing to discredit her memory.  Outwardly and inwardly, I will act as though her eye were still upon me and she could again suffer grief at my failures or thrill with pleasure at my success.”

A portrait of Mrs. Sutherland, painted when Frederick was a lad of ten, hung within a few feet of him as he spoke.  He did not glance at it, but Mr. Sutherland did, and with a look as if he expected to behold a responsive light beam from those pathetic features.

“She loved you very dearly,” was his slow and earnest comment.  “We have both loved you much more deeply than you have ever seemed to realise, Frederick.”

“I believe it,” responded the young man, turning with an expression of calm resolve to meet his father’s eye.  “As proof that I am no longer insensible to your affection, I have made up my mind to forego for your sake one of the dearest wishes of my heart.  Father” he hesitated before he spoke the word, but he spoke it firmly at last,—­“am I right in thinking you would not like Miss Page for a daughter?”

“Like my housekeeper’s niece to take the place in this house once occupied by Marietta Sutherland?  Frederick, I have always thought too well of you to believe you would carry your forgetfulness of me so far as that, even when I saw that you were influenced by her attractions.”

“You did not do justice to my selfishness, father.  I did mean to marry her, but I have given up living solely for myself, and she could never help me to live for others.  Father, Amabel Page must not remain in this house to cause division between you and me.”

“I have already intimated to her the desirability of her quitting a home where she is no longer respected,” the old gentleman declared.  “She leaves on the 10.45 train.  Her conduct this morning at the house of Mrs. Webb—­who perhaps you do not know was most cruelly and foully murdered last night—­was such as to cause comment and make her an undesirable adjunct to any gentleman’s family.”

Frederick paled.  Something in these words had caused him a great shock.  Mr. Sutherland was fond enough to believe that it was the news of this extraordinary woman’s death.  But his son’s words, as soon as lie could find any, showed that his mind was running on Amabel, whom he perhaps had found it difficult to connect even in the remotest way with crime.