een himself and the small boy following in the
wake of the big man through crowded streets and long vistas of shops.
He did not wish to recognise the bond between little Jim Hibbault and
Christopher Aston. But the pictures were very insistent and the
likeness uncomfortably clear. At last, with no more show of emotion or
will than if he were going on an ordinary errand, he walked slowly
down the corridor to Caesar's room. He had entirely forgotten about
Patricia now and was taken aback by Caesar's abrupt inquiry about the
mark or his face.

"It was an accident," he said hurriedly, and then plunged straight
into his own affairs.

"Caesar, I have something to give you."

He held out his hand with a sovereign in it.

Caesar took it and, after glancing at it casually, put it on the table,
looking hard at Christopher, who got red and then white.

"It couldn't have been the sovereign you lost," he said earnestly. "I
didn't take any of that money, really, Caesar. I found this on the
floor by the window. It couldn't have rolled all that long way from
here. It must be another."

He was pleading with himself as much as with Caesar, desiring greatly
to keep faith with his own integrity, though something in Caesar's face
was driving him from his last stronghold.

"You didn't ask me if I'd found a sovereign," he pleaded desperately,
"you asked me if I had taken one of Mrs. Aston's sovereigns, and I
hadn't, because how could it have got to the window from here?"

Caesar's face flushed a dusky red. He spoke in a hard, constrained
voice.

"Charlotte took one of the sovereigns as a plaything when we were not
looking and hid it under the curtain in the window. To her it was only
a toy, but to you----"

He made a last effort to keep control of his temper and failed. The
storm broke.

"But to you----" he repeated with a curiously stinging quality in his
voice as if the words were whipped to white heat by inward wrath--"to
you a sovereign is no toy, but a useful commodity, and your code of
honour--do you call it that?--is doubtless a very convenient one. It
is far too subtle a code for my poor intellect, but since you appear
able to justify it to yourself it is no concern of mine."

Christopher stood still and white under this ruthless attack: all his
energies concentrated in keeping that stillness, but at the back of
his mind was born a dull pain and sharp wonder, a consciousness of the
Law of Consequence by which he must ab