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The words fell grimly, but there was no mockery in the steely eyes, no feeling of any sort. They looked full at Babbacombe with unflickering steadiness, that was all.

Babbacombe listened in the silence of a great amazement. Vaguely he had groped after the truth, but he had never even dimly imagined this. It struck him dumb–this sudden glimpse of a man’s heart which till that moment had been so strenuously hidden from him.

“My dear fellow,” he said at last; “but this is insanity!”

“Perhaps,” West returned, unmoved. “They say every man has his mania. This is mine, and it is a very harmless one. It won’t hurt you to humour it.”

“But–good heavens!–have you thought of her?” Babbacombe exclaimed.

“I am thinking of her only,” West answered quietly. “And I am asking you to do the same, both now and after you have married her.”

“And send you to perdition to secure her peace of mind? A thousand times–no!” Babbacombe turned, and began to pace the room as though his feelings were too much for him. But very soon he stopped in front of West, and spoke with grave resolution. “Look here,” he said, “I think you know that her happiness is more to me than anything else in the world, except my honour. To you it seems to be even more than that. And now listen, for as man to man I tell you the truth. You hold her happiness in the hollow of your hand!”

West’s face remained as a mask; his eyes never varied.

“You can change all that,” he said.

Babbacombe shook his head.

“I am not even sure that I shall try.”

“What then?” said West. “Are you suggesting that the woman you love should marry an ex-convict–a notorious swindler, a blackguard?”

“I think,” Babbacombe answered firmly, “that she ought to be allowed to decide that point.”

“Allowed to ruin herself without interference,” substituted West, sneering faintly. “Well, I don’t agree with you, and I shall never give her the opportunity. You won’t move me from that if you argue till Doomsday. So, in heaven’s name, take what the gods offer, and leave me alone. Marry her. Give her all a good woman ever wants–a happy home, a husband who worships her, and children for her to worship, and you will soon find that I have dropped below the horizon.”

He swung round again to the fire, and drove the poker hard into the coals.

“And find another agent as soon as possible,” he said; “a respectable one this time, one who won’t let you down when you are not looking, who won’t call you a fool when you make mistakes–in short, a gentleman. There are plenty of them about. But they are not to be found in the world’s rubbish heap. There’s nothing but filth and broken crockery there.”

He ended with his brief, cynical laugh, and Babbacombe knew that further discussion would be vain. For good or ill the swindler had made his decision, and he realised that no effort of his would alter it. To attempt to do so would be to beat against a stone wall–a struggle in which he might possibly hurt himself, but which would make no difference whatever to the wall.

Reluctantly he abandoned the argument, and prepared to take his departure.

But later, as he drove home, the man’s words recurred to him and dwelt long in his memory. Their bitterness seemed to cloak something upon which no eye had ever looked–a regret unspeakable, a passionate repentance that found no place.

IX

“I have just discovered of whom it is that your very unpleasant agent reminds me,” observed Lady Cottesbrook at the breakfast-table on the following morning. “It flashed upon me suddenly. He is the very image of that nasty person, Nat Verney, who swindled such a crowd of people a few years ago. I was present at part of his trial, and a more callous, thoroughly insolent creature I never saw. I suppose he is still in prison. I forget exactly what the sentence was, but I know it was a long one. I should think this man must be his twin-brother, Jack. I never saw a more remarkable likeness.”