here, darling! I'm rather a fool to-night. I can't explain things. But
you've been very wonderful to me. You've lighted a torch in the dark. I
kept away because--it didn't seem fair to you to do anything else. You
were back in your own inner circle, and I was miles outside. And you
never wanted to be bound. When I saw you with--Lord Saltash--I knew why."

"My dear!" she said. "You didn't imagine I was in love with
Saltash surely!"

"No--no!" he said. "I knew you weren't. And yet--somehow--I felt you
were nearer to his world than mine. I realized it more and more as the
days went on. And my boy was ill--I couldn't leave him. Juliet--" a hint
of entreaty crept into his voice--"I can't explain. But somehow here on
my own ground it's--different. I feel you belong to me here. I know I can
win and hold you. But there--there--you are--leagues and leagues above
me--far out of reach."

"Oh, Dick!" she said. "I thought you had more sense! Don't you
realize--yet--that your world is the world I want to be in? I want to
forget that other world--just to blot it out of my life--if only you will
make that possible."

"If I will!" he said, with a deep breath. And then suddenly he took her
face between his hands, looking closely into her eyes. "Don't you care
about--all the horrible things I've told you?" he said. "Does it make no
difference at all to you?"

She was still smiling--a tremendous smile. "It doesn't seem much like
it, does it?" she said. "I'm not such a saint myself, Dick. Moreover, I
knew about--some things--before I came."

"What things?" he said.

She made a very winning gesture towards him. "Don't think me a Paul Pry,
dear! But I couldn't help knowing--ages ago--what made the squire--so
fond of you."

"Juliet!" He gazed at her. "How on earth did you find out?"

She coloured deeply under his look. "You--are rather alike--in some
ways," she said. "It was partly that and partly being--well, rather
interested in you, I suppose. And Mrs. Rickett told me as much of your
family history as she knew before I ever met you. So, you see, I didn't
have much to fill in."

"And still it makes no difference?" he said.

She shook her head. "None whatever. I'm just glad for your sake that the
man you hated so was not your father. But I think you go rather far,
Dick, when you say you killed him."

The hard onyx glitter shone again in his eyes. "No, it was not an
exaggeration," he said. "I was a murderer that night. I meant