"Yes, for your father tells me she did so. She also told him various stories of Oliver's baseness, which he felt it his duty to inquire into, and in order that, he might have an interview with Oliver, she arranged with him to come that night to the house in Whitechapel, where she and her husband were living. There she was to confront him with Oliver, and she said that in her presence he would not dare to deny that her tales were true."
"But why did father agree to that? Why did he want to find out?"
"For Ethel's sake. He wanted to protect her. If Mrs. Trent could prove her stories, he meant to expose Oliver to Ethel and myself, if it were but an hour before her marriage——"
"And why didn't he?" demanded Lesley, breathlessly.
here comes in your father's evidence—your father assures me that when he reached the house that night and confronted Oliver, the woman took back every word that she had uttered, and declared that it was all a lie. And Oliver, of course, persisted that he had done nothing amiss. Your father says he was so much tempted to strike Oliver to the ground—for he did not believe in Kingston's retractation—that he flung his stick out upon the landing lest he should use it too effectually. He forgot to pick it up, and came away without it. The pocket-book must of course have fallen out of his pocket as he left the house."
"Then he could not convict Mr. Trent of anything?"
"No, and so he did not feel justified in meddling. But he wishes that he had gone to Ethel at once—or that I had been at home and that he had come to me. He is reproaching himself terribly for his silence now."
"As I have been reproaching myself for mine," said Lesley.
"You have no need. Ethel would never have believed the stories—and as Mrs. Trent denied them again, I think that Oliver would have carried the day. But let her deny them as she will, I believe that they were true, and that Oliver was a villain. Our poor Ethel may live to bless the day when she was delivered from him."