"All right!" he said. "I see you have made up your mind about me, and that you won't let me say a word in my own defense. But every poor beggar of a convict is allowed to say something before they pass sentence, don't you know, and you'll let me say my word before you send me away, painted black right through. Miss Hale, I'm in one of my unlucky months! Everything I've touched this June has gone wrong! My horse—but I don't want to trouble you about that—and to put the finishing touch to the catalogue, I had the bad luck to have you looking on while I'm having a set-to with a country yokel. Of course, you think the worst of me, and yet——" He stopped. "Well, I'm bad enough, I dare say," he said, with a sort of groan; "but I haven't had much chance; I haven't, indeed. They don't make many saints out of the kind of life that has fallen to me. What can you expect of a fellow who is thrown upon the world at nineteen without a friend to keep him straight or say a word of warning? And that was just the way of it with me; my father died when I was nineteen and I was let loose with plenty of money, and not a soul to show me the right road."
"Your mother?" said Margaret, and the next instant regretted it, for across his handsome face came a spasm, as if she had touched a wound across his heart.
"My mother died two years before my father; her death killed him. I wish that it had killed me. Don't let's speak of her."
"I am very sorry, my lord," murmured Margaret.
"All right," he said cheerfully. "If she had been living—but then! Well, I had no one. My uncle—the earl, here—would have nothing to say to me; I reminded him too much that he had lost his own boy and that I must come into the property. As if I wouldn't rather have died instead of the lad! He was as nice a boy as ever you saw—poor little chap! Well, where was I? Oh, on the road to ruin as my uncle said this afternoon, and, by George, he was right!" and he laughed. "But there—once you make the first false step, the rest is easy; it's all down hill, you see, and nobody to put the skid on—nobody! But never mind any more about me; I can see you've passed sentence. Are you living here altogether, Miss Hale?"
"No," said Margaret with a little start, and very quietly. She was thinking of the wasted life, the friendless, guardless youth which his wild, incoherent statement revealed, and something like pity for him was creeping into her heart.
Pity! It is a dangerous sentiment for one like Margaret to harbor for one like Blair Leyton!
"No; I am here on a visit, my lord."