who has something to hide even from his best friends. We know by
experience that dust can be thrown in her unsuspecting eyes."

"You have been kept in the dark," said the Bishop with compassion; "you
have not been fairly treated, Wentworth, you have much to forgive."

In spite of himself Wentworth was awed. He had a sudden sense of
impending calamity. He looked again at Michael.

Michael's hand shook. His whole body shook. His lips trembled
impotently.

Wentworth sickened with shame. His love was wounded to the very depths
to see his brother like this, as it had never been wounded even by the
first sight of him in his convict's blouse.

"I always trusted you," he said with a groan, putting up his hand so as
to shut out that tottering figure. "I don't know what miserable secret
you're keeping from me, and I don't care. It isn't _that_ I mind. It is
that--whatever it was, however disgraceful it was, you should have kept
it from me. God knows I only wanted to help you. Surely, surely,
Michael, you might have trusted me. What have I done that you should
treat me as if I were an enemy? I thought I was your friend."

No one spoke.

"After all, I don't know that I care to hear. Why should I care. It's
rather late in the day to hear now what everyone knows except me, what
I've been breaking my heart over, racking my brains over as you well know
for these two endless years, what you aren't even now telling me of your
own accord, what you have been persuaded to by this--this"--Wentworth
looked at the Bishop--"this outsider, this middle man."

A great jealousy and bitterness were compressed into the words "middle
man."

"You have got to hear," said Michael, and the trembling left him.

He turned towards his brother, still supporting himself with one hand on
the mantelpiece. The two stern faces confronted each other, and Magdalen
for the first time saw a likeness between them.

"I have kept things from you. You are right there," said Michael,
speaking in a low, difficult voice. "But I never intentionally deceived
you till the Marchese was murdered. Long before that, four years before
that, I fell in love."

Wentworth's heart contracted. He had always feared that moment for
Michael, had always awaited it with a little store of remedial maxims.
He had felt confident that Michael had never even been slightly
attracted by any woman. How often he had said to himself that if there
had been any attraction he should have bee