the soiled river, just as Mr
Sharnall had looked. There were the dark-green tresses of duck-weed
swaying to and fro in the shallow eddies, there was the sordid
collection of broken and worthless objects that lay on the bottom, and
he stared at them till the darkness covered them one by one, and only
the whiteness of a broken dish still flickered under the water.

Then he crept back to his room as if he were a felon, and though he went
early to bed, sleep refused to visit him till the day began to break.
With daylight he fell into a troubled doze, and dreamt that he was in a
witness-box before a crowded court. In the dock stood Lord Blandamer
dressed in full peer's robes, and with a coronet on his head. The eyes
of all were turned upon him, Westray, with fierce enmity and contempt,
and it was he, Westray, that a stern-faced judge was sentencing, as a
traducer and lying informer. Then the people in the galleries stamped
with their feet and howled against him in their rage; and waking with a
start, he knew that it was the postman's sharp knock on the street-door,
that had broken his slumber.

The letter which he dreaded lay on the table when he came down. He felt
an intense reluctance in opening it. He almost wondered that the
handwriting was still the same; it was as if he had expected that the
characters should be tremulous, or the ink itself blood-red. Lord
Blandamer acknowledged Mr Westray's letter with thanks. He should
certainly like to see the picture and the family papers of which Mr
Westray spoke; would Mr Westray do him the favour of bringing the
picture to Fording? He apologised for putting him to so much trouble,
but there was another picture in the gallery at Fording, with which it
might be interesting to compare the one recently discovered. He would
send a carriage to meet any train; Mr Westray would no doubt find it
more convenient to spend the night at Fording.

There was no expression of surprise, curiosity, indignation or alarm;
nothing, in fact, except the utmost courtesy, a little more distant
perhaps than usual, but not markedly so.

Westray had been unable to conjecture what would be the nature of Lord
Blandamer's answer. He had thought of many possibilities, of the
impostor's flight, of lavish offers of hush-money, of passionate appeals
for mercy, of scornful and indignant denial. But in all his imaginings
he had never imagined this. Ever since he had sent his own letter, he
had bee