Arthur comes back, if I
am to have any share in it."

"Of course, you must have," she said, almost passionately. "You could
not remain Mr. Maxwell's friend and help him in the work you are going
to do if you did not know, and I had better tell you before Sir Arthur
comes back, so that you can think what is best to be done."

"Very well; tell me, please."

And she told him the whole miserable, pitiful, terrible story as she had
heard it from Carol from beginning to end. When she reached the part
about the flat in Densmore Gardens, his face whitened and his jaws came
together, and he muttered through his teeth:

"Very awful; but, of course, they didn't know. The sins of the fathers!
I am afraid Sir Reginald will have a very terrible confession to make.
It is difficult to believe that a human being could be guilty of such
infamy."

"Still I'm afraid there is no doubt about it," said Dora. "But what's to
be done? Mr. Maxwell will never let his father go to the Abbey now
without telling him what I have told you, and when he knows--no, I
daren't think about it. And poor Mrs. Garthorne, too; she married Mr.
Garthorne in all innocence, although I still believe she would rather
have married Mr. Maxwell. What would happen to her if she knew?"

"She would go mad, I believe," said Ernshaw. "It would be the most
terrible thing that a woman in her position could learn. We can only
hope that she shall never learn. If she ever does, God help her!"

"Yes," said Dora. "And yet, what is to happen? How can she help knowing
in the end? It must come out some time, you know."

"Yes, I am afraid it must," said Ernshaw, "but still, sufficient unto
the day; we shall do no good by anticipating that. We may as well leave
it, as the old Greeks used to say, on the knees of the gods."

And meanwhile the gods were working it out in their own way, using Koda
Bux as their instrument. Vane had gone to sleep after a second dose of
the drug which had brought him out of his fit, and, as the keen Oriental
intellect of Koda Bux had more than half expected, perhaps intended, he
soon began to talk quite reasonably and connectedly in his sleep, and so
it came to pass that a mystery which had puzzled Koda Bux for many a
long year was revealed to him.

When the Doctor came Vane was sleeping quietly, and, while he was
examining him, Sir Arthur arrived, and was told that he had been taken
ill shortly after dinner, and this the Doctor explained was probabl