began, "why I ever married
Oliver Hilditch."

"You were very young," he reminded her, with a little shiver, "and very
inexperienced. I suppose he appealed to you in some way or another."

"It wasn't that," she replied. "He came to visit, me at Eastbourne,
and he certainly knew all the tricks of making himself attractive and
agreeable. But he never won my heart--he never even seriously took my
fancy. I married him because I believed that by doing so I was obeying
my father's wishes."

"Where was your father at the time, then?" Francis asked.

"In South America. Oliver Hilditch was nothing more than a discharged
employe of his, discharged for dishonesty. He had to leave South
America; within a week to escape prosecution, and on the way to Europe
he concocted the plot which very nearly ruined my life. He forged a
letter from my father, begging me, if I found it in any way possible, to
listen to Oliver Hilditch's proposals, and hinting guardedly at a very
serious financial crisis which it was in his power to avert. It never
occurred to me or to my chaperon to question his bona fides. He had
lived under the same roof as my father, and knew all the intimate
details of his life. He was very clever and I suppose I was a fool. I
remember thinking I was doing quite a heroic action when I went to the
registrar with him. What it led to you know."

There was a moment's throbbing silence. Francis, notwithstanding his
deep pity, was conscious of an overwhelming sensation of relief. She had
never cared for Oliver Hilditch! She had never pretended to! He put the
thought into words.

"You never cared for him, then?"

"I tried to," she replied simply, "but I found it impossible. Within a
week of our marriage I hated him."

Francis leaned back, his eyes half closed. In his ears was the sonorous
roar of Piccadilly, the hooting of motor-cars, close at hand the
rustling of a faint wind in the elm trees. It was a wonderful moment.
The nightmare with which he had grappled so fiercely, which he had
overthrown, but whose ghost still sometimes walked by his side, had
lost its chief and most poignant terror. She had been tricked into the
marriage. She had never cared or pretended to care. The primal horror
of that tragedy which he had figured so often to himself, seemed to have
departed with the thought. Its shadow must always remain, but in time
his conscience would acquiesce in the pronouncement of his reason. It
was the hand of justic