I made haste out of the park, but wandered up and down my own field for half an hour, thinking in what shape to put what had occurred before Charley. My perplexity arose not so much from the difficulty involved in the matter itself as from my inability to fix my thoughts. My brain was for the time like an ever-revolving kaleidoscope, in which, however, there was but one fair colour—the thought of Mary. Having at length succeeded in arriving at some conclusion, I went home, and would have despatched Styles at once with the sword, had not Charley already sent him off to the stable, so that I must wait.

‘What has kept you so long, Wilfrid?’ Charley asked, as I entered.

‘I’ve had a tremendous row with Brotherton,’ I answered.

‘The brute! Is he there? I’m glad I was gone. What was it all about?’

‘About that sword. It was very foolish of me to take it without saying a word to Sir Giles.’

‘So it was,’ he returned. ‘I can’t think how you could be so foolish!’

I could, well enough. What with the dream and the waking, I could think little about anything else; and only since the consequences had overtaken me, saw how unwisely I had acted. I now told Charley the greater part of the affair—omitting the false step I had made in saying I had not slept in the house; and also, still with the vague dread of leading to some discovery, omitting to report the treachery of Clara; for, if Charley should talk to her or Mary about it, which was possible enough, I saw several points where the danger would lie very close. I simply told him that I had found Brotherton in the armoury, and reported what followed between us. I did not at all relish having now in my turn secrets from Charley, but my conscience did not trouble me about it, seeing it was for his sister’s sake; and when I saw the rage of indignation into which he flew, I was, if possible, yet more certain I was right. I told him I must go and find Styles, that he might take the sword at once; but he started up, saying he would carry it back himself, and at the same time take his leave of Sir Giles, whose house, of course, he could never enter again after the way I had been treated in it. I saw this would lead to a rupture with the whole family, but I should not regret that, for there could be no advantage to Mary either in continuing her intimacy, such as it was, with Clara, or in making further acquaintance with Brotherton. The time of their departure was also close at hand, and might be hastened without necessarily involving much of the unpleasant. Also, if Charley broke with them at once, there would be the less danger of his coming to know that I had not given him all the particulars of my discomfiture. If he were to find I had told a falsehood, how could I explain to him why I had done so? This arguing on probabilities made me feel like a culprit who has to protect himself by concealment; but I will not dwell upon my discomfort in the half-duplicity thus forced upon me. I could not help it. I got down the sword, and together we looked at it for the first and last time. I found the description contained in the book perfectly correct. The upper part was inlaid with gold in a Greekish pattern, crossed by the initials W. C. I gave it up to Charley with a sigh of submission to the inevitable, and having accompanied him to the park-gate, roamed my field again until his return.

He rejoined me in a far quieter mood, and for a moment or two I was silent with the terror of learning that he had become acquainted with my unhappy blunder. After a little pause, he said,

‘I’m very sorry I didn’t see Brotherton. I should have liked just a word or two with him.’

‘It’s just as well not,’ I said. ‘You would only have made another row. Didn’t you see any of them?’

‘I saw the old man. He seemed really cut up about it, and professed great concern. He didn’t even refer to you by name—and spoke only in general terms. I told him you were incapable of what was laid to your charge; that I had not the slightest doubt of your claim to the sword,—your word being enough for me,—and that I trusted time would right you. I went too far there, however, for I haven’t the slightest hope of anything of the sort.’

‘How did he take all that?’

‘He only smiled—incredulously and sadly,—so that I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell him all my mind. I only insisted on my own perfect confidence in you.—I’m afraid I made a poor advocate, Wilfrid. Why should I mind his grey hairs where justice is concerned? I am afraid I was false to you, Wilfrid.’

‘Nonsense; you did just the right thing, old boy. Nobody could have done better.’

‘Do you think so? I am so glad! I have been feeling ever since as if I ought to have gone into a rage, and shaken the dust of the place from my feet for a witness against the whole nest of them! But somehow I couldn’t—what with the honest face and the sorrowful look of the old man.’

‘You are always too much of a partisan, Charley; I don’t mean so much in your actions—for this very one disproves that—but in your notions of obligation. You forget that you had to be just to Sir Giles as well as to me, and that he must be judged—not by the absolute facts of the case, but by what appeared to him to be the facts. He could not help misjudging me. But you ought to help misjudging him. So you see your behaviour was guided by an instinct or a soul, or what you will, deeper than your judgment.’

‘That may be—but he ought to have known you better than believe you capable of misconduct.’

‘I don’t know that. He had seen very little of me. But I dare say he puts it down to cleptomania. I think he will be kind enough to give the ugly thing a fine name for my sake. Besides, he must hold either by his son or by me.’

‘That’s the worst that can be said on my side of the question. He must by this time be aware that that son of his is nothing better than a low scoundrel.’

‘It takes much to convince a father of such an unpleasant truth as that, Charley.’

‘Not much, if my experience goes for anything.’

‘I trust it is not typical, Charley.’

‘I suppose you’re going to stand up for Geoffrey next?’

‘I have no such intention. But if I did, it would be but to follow your example. We seem to change sides every now and then. You remember how you used to defend Clara when I expressed my doubts about her.’

‘And wasn’t I right? Didn’t you come over to my side?’

‘Yes, I did,’ I said, and hastened to change the subject; adding, ‘As for Geoffrey, there is room enough to doubt whether he believes what he says, and that makes a serious difference. In thinking over the affair since you left me, I have discovered further grounds for questioning his truthfulness.’

‘As if that were necessary!’ he exclaimed, with an accent of scorn.’ But tell me what you mean?’ he added.

‘In turning the thing over in my mind, this question has occurred to me.—He read from the manuscript that oh the blade of the sword, near the hilt, were the initials of Wilfrid Cumbermede. Now, if the sword had never been drawn from the scabbard, how was that to be known to the writer?’

‘Perhaps it was written about that time,’ said Charley.

‘No; the manuscript was evidently written some considerable time after. It refers to tradition concerning it.’

‘Then the writer knew it by tradition.’

The moment Charley’s logical faculty was excited his perception was impartial.

‘Besides,’ he went on,’ it does not follow that the sword had really never been drawn before. Mr Close even may have done so, for his admiration was apparently quite as much for weapons themselves as for their history. Clara could hardly have drawn it as she did if it had not been meddled with before.’

The terror lest he should ask me how I came to carry it home without the scabbard hurried my objection.

‘That supposition, however, would only imply that Brotherton might have learned the fact from the sword itself, not from the book. I should just like to have one peep of the manuscript to see whether what he read was all there!’

‘Or any of it, for that matter,’ said Charley. ‘Only it would have been a more tremendous risk than I think he would have run.’

‘I wish I had thought of it sooner, though.’

My suspicion was that Clara had examined the blade thoroughly, and given him a full description of it. He might, however, have been at the Hall on some previous occasion, without my knowledge, and might have seen the half-drawn blade on the wall, examined it, and pushed it back into the sheath; which might have so far loosened the blade that Clara was afterwards able to draw it herself. I was all but certain by this time that it was no other than she that had laid it on my bed. But then why had she drawn it? Perhaps that I might leave proof of its identity behind me—for the carrying out of her treachery, whatever the object of it might be. But this opened a hundred questions not to be discussed, even in silent thought, in the presence of another.

‘Did you see your mother, Charley?’ I asked.

‘No, I thought it better not to trouble her. They are going to-morrow. Mary had persuaded her—why, I don’t know—to return a day or two sooner than they had intended.’

‘I hope Brotherton will not succeed in prejudicing them against me.’

‘I wish that were possible,’ he answered. ‘But the time for prejudice is long gone by.’

I could not believe this to be the case in respect of Mary; for I could not but think her favourably inclined to me.

‘Still,’ I said, ‘I should not like their bad opinion of me to be enlarged as well as strengthened by the belief that I had attempted to steal Sir Giles’s property. You must stand my friend there, Charley.’

‘Then you do doubt me, Wilfrid?’

‘Not a bit, you foolish fellow.’

‘You know, I can’t enter that house again, and I don’t care about writing to my mother, for my father is sure to see it; but I will follow my mother and Mary the moment they are out of the grounds to-morrow, and soon see whether they’ve got the story by the right end.’

The evening passed with me in alternate fits of fierce indignation and profound depression, for, while I was clear to my own conscience in regard of my enemies, I had yet thrown myself bound at their feet by my foolish lie; and I all but made up my mind to leave the country, and only return after having achieved such a position—of what sort I had no more idea than the school-boy before he sets himself to build a new castle in the air—as would buttress any assertion of the facts I might see fit to make in after-years.

When we had parted for the night, my brains began to go about, and the centre of their gyrations was not Mary now, but Clara. What could have induced her to play me false? All my vanity, of which I had enough, was insufficient to persuade me that it could be out of revenge for the gradual diminution of my attentions to her. She had seen me pay none to Mary, I thought, unless she had caught a glimpse from the next room of the little passage of the ring, and that I did not believe. Neither did I believe she had ever cared enough about me to be jealous of whatever attentions I might pay to another. But in all my conjectures, I had to confess myself utterly foiled. I could imagine no motive. Two possibilities alone, both equally improbable, suggested themselves—the one, that she did it for pure love of mischief, which, false as she was to me, I could not believe; the other, which likewise I rejected, that she wanted to ingratiate herself with Brotherton. I had still, however, scarcely a doubt that she had laid the sword on my bed. Trying to imagine a connection between this possible action and Mary’s mistake, I built up a conjectural form of conjectural facts to this effect—that Mary had seen her go into my room, had taken it for the room she was to share with her, and had followed her either at once—in which case I supposed Clara to have gone out by the stair to the roof to avoid being seen—or afterwards, from some accident, without a light in her hand. But I do not care to set down more of my speculations, for none concerning this either were satisfactory to myself, and I remain almost as much in the dark to this day. In any case the fear remained that Clara must be ever on the borders of the discovery of Mary’s secret, if indeed she did not know it already, which was a dreadful thought—more especially as I could place no confidence in her. I was glad to think, however, that they were to be parted so soon, and I had little fear of any correspondence between them.

The next morning Charley set out to waylay them at a certain point on their homeward journey. I did not propose to accompany him. I preferred having him speak for me first, not knowing how much they might have heard to my discredit, for it was far from probable the matter had been kept from them. After he had started, however, I could not rest, and for pure restlessness sent Styles to fetch my mare. The loss of my sword was a trifle to me now, but the proximity of the place where I should henceforth be regarded as what I hardly dared to realize, was almost unendurable. As if I had actually been guilty of what was laid to my charge, I longed to hide myself in some impenetrable depth, and kept looking out impatiently for Styles’s return. At length I caught sight of my Lilith’s head rising white from the hollow in which the farm lay, and ran up to my room to make a little change in my attire. Just as I snatched my riding-whip from a hook by the window, I spied a horseman approaching from the direction of the park gates. Once more it was Mr Coningham, riding hitherward from the windy trees. In no degree inclined to meet him, I hurried down the stair, and arriving at the very moment Styles drew up, sprung into the saddle, and would have galloped off in the opposite direction, confident that no horse of Mr Coningham’s could overtake my Lilith. But the moment I was in the saddle, I remembered there was a pile of books on the window-sill of my uncle’s room, belonging to the library at the Hall, and I stopped a moment to give Styles the direction to take them home at once, and, having asked a word of Miss Pease, to request her, with my kind regards, to see them safely deposited amongst the rest. In consequence of this delay, just as I set off at full speed from the door, Mr Coningham rode round the corner of the house.

‘What a devil of a hurry you are in, Mr Cumbermede!’ he cried. ‘I was just coming to see you. Can’t you spare me a word?’

I was forced to pull up, and reply as civilly as might be.

‘I am only going for a ride,’ I said, ‘and will go part of your way with you if you like.’

‘Thank you. That will suit me admirably, I am going Gastford way. Have you ever been there?’

‘No,’ I answered. ‘I have only just heard the name of the village.’

‘It is a pretty place. But there’s the oddest old church you ever saw, within a couple of miles of it—alone in the middle of a forest—or at least it was a forest not long ago. It is mostly young trees now. There isn’t a house within a mile of it, and the nearest stands as lonely as the church—quite a place to suit the fancy of a poet like you! Come along and see it. You may as well go one way as another, if you only want a ride.’

‘How far is it?’ I asked.

‘Only seven or eight miles across country. I can take you all the way through lanes and fields.’

Perplexed or angry I was always disinclined for speech; and it was only after things had arranged themselves in my mind, or I had mastered my indignation, that I would begin to feel communicative. But something prudential inside warned me that I could not afford to lose any friend I had; and although I was not prepared to confide my wrongs to Mr Coningham, I felt I might some day be glad of his counsel.