“Yes, you shall know,” he answered, with a sigh of relief.  “It is best that somebody should know, and best of all that it should be you.  But first tell me how you found out that I could use my father’s title—­I have never told anybody here.”

“An Englishman told me, who wanted his trunk taken to the steamer.  He saw you cross the street.  ‘That’s Sir Felix O’Day,’ he said, ’and he has had more trouble than any man I ever knew.’”

“Did you check the trunk?”

“Yes.”

“That explains how my solicitor in London, whom I have just heard from, discovered my address.  He mentioned a trunk-tag as his clew; he and the Englishman evidently met.  As to the title, it was of no use to me here.  I may use it now, at home, for he writes that there were several hundreds of pounds sterling saved out of my own and my father’s wreck, together with a small cottage and a few acres of land near London.  Had I known it, however, before I came here, it would have made no difference, nor would it have altered my plan.  I had come here to find my wife, for I knew that sooner or later she would be utterly stranded, without a human being to whom she could appeal; but I never expected to find her a criminal.  Terrible!  Terrible!  I cannot yet take it in.  Poor child!  What is to become of her, God only knows!”

He had risen, and in his agony walked to the window, his updrawn shoulders tense, like those of a man standing by an open grave.  He stood there for a moment, Kitty silently watching him, until, with a deep sigh, he came back to his chair.

“I have been a fool, no doubt, to pursue this thing as I have, but there seemed no other way.  I could not have lived with myself afterward, if I had not made the effort.  I knew that you and your husband often wondered at the life I led, and I have often thanked you in my heart for your loyalty.  It is but another one of the things that have made this home so dear to me.  I told Father Cruse what brought me to New York, so that he could help me find her, and he has been more than kind.  Many a night we have tramped the streets together, or have searched haunts that either she, or the man who ruined her, might frequent, or where we should meet persons who had seen them, but so far, you are the only person who has brought us near to each other.

“I tell you now because it is better that you and I should understand each other before I sail, and because, too, you are a big, brave, true-hearted woman who can and will understand.  You may not think it, but you have been a revelation to me, Mrs. Cleary—­you and this home—­and the neighborhood, in fact, peopled with clean, wholesome men and women.  It has been a great lesson to me and a marvellous contrast to what had surrounded me at home.  You were right in your surmise that my wife is a lady, and that I have been born a gentleman.  And now I will tell you why we are both here.”