e wailed, "can this be true?"

"God knows that it is true!" answered Hubert; and his face carried
conviction if his words did not.

"It is impossible!" cried the General. "To begin with, if you had
committed this crime--for a duel in the way you mention was a crime and
nothing else--you would never have allowed this man to suffer for it. I
absolutely refuse to believe, sir, that my kinsman is such a base,
cowardly villain! This is a fit of delirium--nothing else!"

"It is simple truth," said Hubert sadly. "That I did not at once
exonerate Andrew Westwood is, to my thinking, the worst part of my
crime. I acknowledge that I--I dared not confess; and I left him to bear
the blame."

"Good heavens, sir, do you tell me that to my face?" thundered the old
man, with uplifted hand. "You are a disgrace to the family! I am glad
that you do not bear my name."

He would perhaps even have struck the younger man if Cynthia had not
twined her arms more closely round Hubert's neck, and made herself for
the moment a defence to him. But Hubert drew himself away.

"Let me go, Cynthia," he said quietly. "You must not come between us.
The General is right, and I am a disgrace to my name. He must do what he
thinks fit."

But the General had turned away, and was walking furiously up and down
the room, too angry and too much overcome for speech. Miss Vane was
sobbing bitterly. Flossy watched her brother's face. She saw that he
was trying not to implicate her. Would she escape? If his silence and
her own could save her, she would be safe. But she had reckoned without
Andrew Westwood.

"I beg pardon, sir," said Cynthia's father, addressing himself to the
General; "but this ain't fair! Mr. Lepel is getting more of the blame
than he deserves. Suppose you let me speak a word for him?"

"You!" said the General, stopping short. "You, who have suffered his
punishment, cannot have much to say for him! If--if this is true," he
went on, with a curious mixture of stiffness and of shame, "we have much
to answer for with respect to you--much to make up----"

"Not so much as maybe you think," said Andrew Westwood. "I was bitter
enough at the time, and I have thought often and often of the words that
I said at the trial--how I cursed the man that brought me to that pass
and all that he held dear. Curses come home to roost, they say. At any
rate, the person who is dearest to him, I believe, is my very own
daughter, whom I myself love better that any