“You know that I killed Oliver Hilditch?” Sir Timothy said, his eyes fixed upon the other’s.

“I know that you killed Oliver Hilditch,” Francis repeated.  “If I had been Margaret’s father, I think that I should have done the same.”

Sir Timothy seemed suddenly very much younger.  The droop of his lips was no longer pathetic.  There was a little humourous twitch there.

“You, the great upholder of the law?” he murmured.

“I have heard the story of Oliver Hilditch’s life,” Francis replied.  “I was partially responsible for saving him from the gallows.  I repeat what I have said.  And if you will—­”

He held out his hand.  Sir Timothy hesitated for one moment.  Instead of taking it, he laid his hand upon Francis’ shoulder.

“Ledsam,” he said, “we have thought wrong things of one another.  I thought you a prig, moral to your finger-tips with the morality of the law and the small places.  Perhaps I was tempted for that reason to give you a wrong impression of myself.  But you must understand this.  Though I have had my standard and lived up to it all my life, I am something of a black sheep.  A man stole my wife.  I did not trouble the Law Courts.  I killed him.”

“I have the blood of generations of lawyers in my veins,” Francis declared, “but I have read many a divorce case in which I think it would have been better and finer if the two men had met as you and that man met.”

“I was born with the love of fighting in my bones,” Sir Timothy went on.  “In my younger days, I fought in every small war in the southern hemisphere.  I fought, as you know, in our own war.  I have loved to see men fight honestly and fairly.”

“It is a man’s hobby,” Francis pronounced.

“I encouraged you deliberately to think,” Sir Timothy went on, “what half the world thinks that—­my parties at The Walled House were mysterious orgies of vice.  They have, as a matter of fact, never been anything of the sort.  The tragedies which are supposed to have taken place on my launch have been just as much mock tragedies as last night’s, only I have not previously chosen to take the audiences into my confidence.  The greatest pugilists in the world have fought in my gymnasium, often, if you will, under illegal conditions, but there has never been a fight that was not fair.”

“I believe that,” Francis said.

“And there is another matter for which I take some blame,” Sir Timothy went on, “the matter of Fairfax and Victor Bidlake.  They were neither of them young men for whose loss the world is any the worse.  Fairfax to some extent imposed upon me.  He was brought to The Walled House by a friend who should have known better.  He sought my confidence.  The story he told was exactly that of the mock drama upon the launch.  Bidlake had taken his wife.  He had no wish to appeal to the Courts.  He wished to fight, a point of view with which I entirely sympathised.  I arranged