hat. But you
mustn't see him alone, while you are like this."

"No, I don't want to," said Morris. "I should like other people to see
what I've got to--to say to him--that, that partner of yours."

"He has from this moment ceased to be my partner," said Mr. Taynton
brokenly. "I could never again sign what he has signed, or work with
him, or--or--except once--see him again. He is coming here by
appointment at half-past nine. Suppose that we all meet here. We have
both got to see him."

Morris nodded and went toward the door. A sudden spasm of anxiety seemed
to seize Mr. Taynton.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked.

"I don't know. Drive to Falmer Park perhaps, and tell Sir Richard you
cannot see him immediately. Will you see him to-morrow?"

"Yes, I will call to-morrow morning. Morris, promise me you will do
nothing rash, nothing that will bring sorrow on all those who love you."

"I shall bring a little sorrow on a man who hates me," said he.

He went out, and Mr. Taynton sat down again, his mouth compressed into
hard lines, his forehead heavily frowning. He could not permanently
prevent Morris from meeting Godfrey Mills, besides, it was his right to
do so, yet how fraught with awful risks to himself that meeting would be!
Morris might easily make a violent, even a murderous, assault on the man,
but Mills was an expert boxer and wrestler, science would probably get
the upper hand of blind rage. But how deadly a weapon Mills had in store
against himself; he would certainly tell Morris that if one partner had
slandered him the other, whom he so trusted and revered, had robbed him;
he would say, too, that Taynton had been cognizant of, and had approved,
his slanders. There was no end to the ruin that would certainly be
brought about his head if they met. Mills's train, too, would have left
London by now; there was no chance of stopping him. Then there was
another danger he had not foreseen, and it was too late to stop that now.
Morris was going again to Falmer Park, had indeed started, and that
afternoon Godfrey Mills would get out of the train, as he had planned, at
the station just below, and walk back over the downs to Brighton. What if
they met there, alone?

For an hour perhaps Mr. Taynton delved at these problems, and at the end
even it did not seem as if he had solved them satisfactorily, for when
he went out of his house, as he did at the end of this time to get a
little breeze if such was obtainabl