Mr. Francis paused.
"All, all," he said earnestly. "The past has been expunged with a word. That burden which so long I have carried about is gone, like the burden of Christian's. Ah! you do not know what it was! But now, if she—Miss Aylwin—believed it, she would not come within a mile of me; if her mother still believed it, she would not let her, and Lady Oxted would not let her. A hard, strange woman, was Mrs. Aylwin, Harry. I told you, I remember, what passed between us. But it is over, over. Yes, yes, the healing comes late, and the recompense; but it comes—it has come."
"I do not know Mrs. Aylwin," said Harry. "I have never ever seen her. But I can answer for it that Miss Aylwin believes utterly and entirely in your innocence."
"How is that? How is that?" asked Mr. Francis.
"She told me so herself," said Harry. "How strange it all is, and how it all works together! I told her, you must know, the first evening I met her, about the Luck, and last week, when I was down with the Oxteds, I told her, Uncle Francis, about the awful troubles you had been through, particularly—particularly that one. At the moment I did not know that she was in any way connected with the Harmsworths. I knew of her only what I had seen of her. And then, in the middle, she stopped me, saying she knew all, saying also that she entirely believed in you."
Mr. Francis walked on a few steps in silence, and Harry spoke again.
"Perhaps I ought not to have told her," he said, "but the Luck held. She was the right person, you see. And somehow, you will agree with me, I think, when you see her, she is a person to whom it is natural to tell things. She is so sympathetic—I have no words—so eager to know what interests and is important to her friends. Yes, already I count myself a friend of hers."
"Then her mother had not told her all?" asked Mr. Francis, with the air of one deliberating.
"Not all; not your name. She had no idea that she was talking to the nephew of the man about whom she had heard from her mother."
Mr. Francis quickened his pace, like a man who has made up his mind.