Mr. Edwin Barley, standing with his back to the door, his thumbs in the button-holes of his waistcoat, as a man at complete ease, wheeled round at the words. Sir Harry Chandos waited for him to speak, never inviting him to sit.

"Good morning, Mr. Chandos."

"Good morning," coldly returned Sir Harry. "To what am I indebted for the honour of this visit?"

"I will tell you. One object of it is to demand an explanation of your treatment of Mrs. Penn. She has brought her wrongs to me; her only living relative, as she puts it. I suppose, as such it lies with me to ask it. Mrs. Penn was engaged by Lady Chandos; engaged as a lady: and you have turned her away as a menial, subjecting her to gross indignity."

Sir Harry stared at the speaker, scarcely crediting his own ears. The exceeding impudence of the proceeding, after Mrs. Penn\'s treacherous conduct, was something unique.

"You will obtain no explanation from me, sir; you can apply to Mrs. Penn herself if you require one. I am disgusted at the wickedness, the false deception of the whole affair, and will not condescend to recur to it. You are not welcome in this house, Mr. Edwin Barley, and I must request you to quit it. I cannot conceive how you could have dared to come here."

"The explanation, sir," persisted Mr. Edwin Barley. "Fine words will not enable you to evade it."

He spoke as though he really required the explanation. Sir Harry did not understand, and a few sharp words passed on either side. Both were labouring under a mistake. Sir Harry assumed that all Mrs. Penn had done in the house had been under the express direction of Mr. Edwin Barley. Mr. Edwin Barley, on his side, was not aware that she had done anything wrong. They were at cross-purposes, and at that angry moment did not arrive at straight ones.

"Treachery?" echoed Mr. Edwin Barley, in answer to a word dropped by Sir Harry. "The police will soon be in charge of one, guilty of something worse than treachery. A criminal lying under the ban of the law is not far off."

"You allude to my brother, Mr. Edwin Barley. True. He is lying not far-off--very near."

The quiet words--for Sir Harry\'s voice had dropped to a strange calmness--took Edwin Barley by surprise. In this ready avowal, could it be that he foresaw fear to doubt that George Heneage had already again made his escape? Drawing aside the white blind, he saw one of the police officers under the trees opposite; the other of course being at the back of the house. And it reassured him. Never more could George Heneage escape him.

"Your brother shall not elude me, Mr. Chandos. I swear it. I have waited for years--for years Harry Chandos--to catch him upon English ground. That he is on it now, I know. I know that you have him in hiding: here in the west wing of your house. Will you resign him peacefully to the two men I have outside? Revengeful though you may deem me, I would rather spare disturbance to your mother. The fact of his apprehension cannot be concealed from her: that is impossible; but I would spare her as far as I can, and I would have wished to see her to tell her this. If you do not give him up quietly, the policemen must come in."

"I think--to save you and the police useless trouble--you had better pay a personal visit to my brother," said Sir Harry. "You have rightly said that he has been in hiding in the west wing; he is there still."

"Your brother!--George!" exclaimed Mr. Edwin Barley, quite taken aback by the invitation, and suspecting some trick.

"My brother George," was the quiet answer. "Did you think I was speaking of Sir Thomas? He, poor fellow, is no longer in existence."

"As I hear: and I am sorry for it. Your servant wished to assure me that you had succeeded to the honours; he calls you \'Sir Harry.\' I told him better," concluded Mr. Edwin Barley, with a cough that said much.

"I do succeed to them--more\'s the pity. I wish Thomas had lived to bear them to a green old age."

"Let me advise you not to assume them, at any rate, Harry Chandos the time has not come for it, and the world might laugh at you. George Chandos, fugitive-criminal though he has been, would succeed until proved guilty. Wait."

"You are wasting my time," rejoined Sir Harry. "Will you pay a visit to the west wing?"

"For what purpose? You are fooling me!"

"I told you the purpose--to see my brother George. You shall see him, on my word of honour."

The answer was a gesture of assent, and Sir Harry crossed the hall to ascend the stairs. Mr. Edwin Barley slowly followed him, doubt in his step, defiance in his face. That he was thoroughly perplexed, is saying little; but he came to the conclusion as he walked along the gallery that George Heneage was about to beseech his clemency. His clemency! Hill opened the west wing. Seeing a stranger, she would have barred it again, but Sir Harry put her aside with calm authority, and went straight to one of the rooms. Turning for a moment there, he spoke to his visitor.

"We have not been friends, Mr. Barley; the one has regarded the other as his natural enemy, still I would not allow even you to come in here without a word of warning, lest you should be shocked."

"Lead on, sir," was the imperative answer. And Sir Harry went in without further delay.

On the bed, laid out in his shroud, sleeping the peaceful sleep of death, was the emaciated form of George Heneage Chandos. Mr. Edwin Barley gazed at him, and the perspiration broke out on his forehead.

"By heaven! he has escaped me!"

"He has escaped all the foes of this world," answered Sir Harry, lowly and reverently. "You perceive now, Mr. Edwin Barley, that were you to bring the whole police force of the county here, they would only have the trouble of going back for their pains. He is at rest from persecution; and we are at rest from suspense and anxiety."

"It has destroyed my life\'s aim," observed Mr. Edwin Barley.

"And with it your thirst for revenge. When a man pursues another with the persistent hatred that you have pursued him, it can be called nothing less than revenge."

"Revenge! What do you mean? He did commit the murder."

"His hand was the hand that killed Philip King: but it was not intentional murder. He never knew exactly--at the time or since--how he fired the gun, save that his elbow caught against the branch of a tree when the gun was on cock. Some movement of his own undoubtedly caused it; he knew that; but not a wilful one. He asserted this with his dying lips before taking the Sacrament."

"Wilful or not wilful, he murdered Philip King," insisted Mr. Edwin Barley.

"And has paid for it. The banned life he has been obliged to live since was surely an expiation. His punishment was greater than he could bear; it was prolonged and prolonged, and his heart broke."

Mr. Edwin Barley had his eyes fixed on the dead face, possibly tracing the likeness to the handsome young man of nine or ten years ago.

"Of other crime towards you he was innocent," pursued Sir Harry. "He never injured you or yours; there might have been folly in his heart in the heyday of his youth and spirits; there was no sin. You have been unreasonably vindictive."

"I say NO," returned Mr. Edwin Barley, striving to suppress an emotion that was rising and would not be suppressed. "Had I ever injured George Heneage, that he should come into my home and make it desolate? What had my wife or my ward done to him that he should take their lives? He killed both of them: the one deliberately, the other indirectly, for her death arose out of the trouble Charlotte Delves--Mrs. Penn now, of whom you complain,--lost her only relative, saving myself, when she lost Philip King. And for me? I was left in that same desolate home, bereft of all I cared for, left to go through life alone. Few men have loved a wife as I loved mine: she was my one little ewe lamb, Harry Chandos. Vindictive! Think of my wrongs."

Looking there at each other, the dead face lying between them, it might be that both felt there was much to forgive. Certainly Harry Chandos had never until that moment realized the misery it had brought to Edwin Barley.

"I see; we have an alike suffered. But he who caused the suffering is beyond reproach now."

"As things have turned out the game is yours, Sir Harry," said Mr. Edwin Barley, who was too much a man of the world to persist in denying him the title, now that he found it was beyond dispute his. "For my actions I am accountable to none; and were the time to come over again, I should do as I have done."

He turned to quit the room as he spoke, and Mr. Chandos followed him downstairs. A word exchanged at their foot caused Mr. Barley to inquire what it was Mrs. Penn had done: and then Sir Harry gave him the full particulars, with the additional information that she was assumed to have been acting for him, Edwin Barley.

"She was not," said Mr. Barley, shortly. "I knew nothing of this. Placed in the house by me, Sir Harry? She placed herself in the house, as I conclude; certainly I did not place her."

"You have met her in secret in the grounds."

"I have met her accidentally, not secretly. Twice, I think it was: or three times, I am not sure. She chose to repeat things to me; I did not ask for them. Not that they were of any worth--as the unmolested retirement of George Heneage here proves."

He had been moving to the hall-door gradually. Sir Harry put a sudden question to him, quite upon impulse, he told me afterwards, just as the thought occurred.

"Has your wife\'s will ever been found?"

"What is that to you?" asked Mr. Edwin Barley, turning to face him.

"Little indeed. I am sorry to have mentioned it: it was not in any wish to add to the discomforts of the day. As I have, I will ask you to remember that there are others in the world as capable of error, not to say crime, as was poor George Heneage."

"Do you insinuate that I suppressed the will?" demanded Mr. Edwin Barley.

"No. The will could not disappear without hands; but I should be sorry to give the very faintest opinion as to whose hands they were that took it. With your great fortune, it seems next door to an impossibility that you could have suppressed it: on the other hand, you alone derived benefit. The thing is a puzzle to me, Mr. Edwin Barley."

"But that you seem to speak honestly in saying so, without sinister insinuation, I would knock you down, Sir Harry Chandos," was Edwin Barley\'s answer.

"I insinuate nothing; and I say neither more nor less than I have said. It was a paltry sum to run a risk for, whoever might have been guilty of the abstraction. Not only that: no blessing--or luck, as the world would call it--ever yet attended one who robbed the orphan."

"You would wish me to make a merit of generosity, and offer Miss Hereford a present of the money," said Mr. Edwin Barley, a ring of mockery in his tones.

"By no means," hastily replied Sir Harry. "Miss Hereford\'s future position in life will preclude her feeling the want of it. You informed me the last time I had the honour of speaking to you, that you were Miss Hereford\'s only relative: as such, allow me to acquaint you with the fact that she is to be my wife."

"I expected it would end in that," was Mr. Edwin Barley\'s answer. "And I tell you honestly that I would have removed her from here in time to prevent it, had it been in my power. I liked the child; my wife loved her; and I had rather she married any one in the world than a Chandos. It is too late now."

"Quite too late. Although I am a Chandos, I shall hope to make her happy, Mr. Edwin Barley. I will do my best for it."

Hickens went into the hall at that juncture and the colloquy came to a close. Mr. Edwin Barley moved rapidly to the door, which Hickens opened, and went away with a quick step.

"I have no further orders," he said to the policeman, who was standing at an angle watching the back of the house and part of the avenue. "The prisoner has escaped."

"Escaped, sir! It must have been before we came on then. Shall we search for him?"

"No. He is gone where search would not reach him."

Mr. Edwin Barley strode on with the last words. The man, somewhat mystified, stared after him, and then crossed the lawn to give notice to his fellow that their mission to Chandos seemed to be over.

"Le diable n\'est pas si noir que l\'on dit," runs the idiomatic saying in France. We have it also in English, as the world of course knows; but it sounds better, that is, less wrong, to give it in the former language. We girls at school there said it often; had one of us ventured on the English sentence at Miss Fenton\'s, that lady\'s eyes would have grown round with horror.

It might be applied to Mr. Edwin Barley. Looking back dispassionately, bringing reason to bear on the retrospect, I could not trace one single act or word in him that would justify me in having thought him so bad a man. Taking the colouring from my first view of him, when his da............