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She turned back to the fire, but she left her hand in his.

“My dear,” she said, in an odd little choked voice, “it’s just like you to say so, and I guess I sha’n’t forget it. Well, well! There’s my romance in a nutshell. He didn’t care a fig for me till just the last. He cared then, but it was too late to come to anything. They shipped him back again you know, and he was sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude. He’s done nearly twelve, and he’s coming out next month on ticket-of-leave.”

“Oh, Cynthia!”

Babbacombe bent his head suddenly upon her hand, and sat tense and silent.

“I know,” she said–“I know. It sounds simply monstrous, put into bald words. I sometimes wonder myself if it can possibly be true–if I, Cynthia Mortimer, can really be such a fool. But I can’t possibly tell for certain till I see him again. I must see him again somehow. I’ve waited all these years–all these years.”

Babbacombe groaned.

“And suppose, when you’ve seen him, you still care?”

She shook her head.

“What then, Jack? I don’t know; I don’t know.”

He pulled himself together, and sat up.

“Do you know where he is?”

“Yes. He is at Barren Hill. He has been there for five years now. My solicitor knows that I take an interest in him. He calls it philanthropy.” Cynthia smiled faintly into the fire. “I was one of the people he swindled,” she said. “But he paid me back.”

She rose and went across the room to a bureau in a corner. She unlocked a drawer, and took something from it. Returning, she laid a packet of notes in Babbacombe’s hands.

“I could never part with them,” she said. “He gave them to me in a sealed parcel the last time I saw him. It’s only a hundred pounds. Yes, that was the message he wrote. Can you read it? ‘With apologies from the man who swindled you.’ As if I cared for the wretched money!”

Babbacombe frowned over the writing in silence.

“Why don’t you say what you think, Jack?” she said. “Why don’t you call him a thieving scoundrel and me a poor, romantic fool!”

“I am trying to think how I can help you,” he answered quietly. “Have you any plans?”

“No, nothing definite,” she said. “It is difficult to know what to do. He knows one thing–that he has a friend who will help him when he comes out. He will be horribly poor, you know, and I’m so rich. But, of course, I would do it anonymously. And he thinks his friend is a man.”

Babbacombe pondered with drawn brows.

“Cynthia,” he said slowly, at length, “suppose I take this matter into my own hands, suppose I make it possible for you to see this man once more, will you be guided entirely by me? Will you promise me solemnly to take no rash step of any description; in short, to do nothing without consulting me? Will you promise me, Cynthia?”

He spoke very earnestly. The firelight showed her the resolution on his face.

“Of course I will promise you, Jack,” she said instantly. “I would trust myself body and soul in your keeping. But what can you do?”

“I might do this,” he said. “I might pose as his unknown friend–another philanthropist, Cynthia.” He smiled rather grimly. “I might get hold of him when he comes out, give him something to do to keep his head above water. If he has any manhood in him, he won’t mind what he takes. And I might–later, if I thought it practicable–I only say ‘if,’ Cynthia, for after many years of prison life a man isn’t always fit company for a lady–I might arrange that you should see him in some absolutely casual fashion. If you consent to this arrangement you must leave that entirely to me.”

“But you will hate to do it!” she exclaimed.

He rose. “I will do it for your sake,” he said. “I shall not hate it if it makes you see things–as they are.”