"It was the night I came down to bid you good-by," he confessed, "and didn't have time to wait. I didn't come down for the photo. I never thought of it till I saw it there. I came down to kind of warn you, Miss Blanche!"
"Against him?" she said, as if there was only one man left in the world.
"Yes—I guess I'd already warned Cazalet that I was starting on his tracks."
And then Blanche just said, "Poor—old—Sweep!" as one talking to herself. And Toye seized upon the words as she had seized on nothing from him.
"Have you only pity for the fellow?" he cried; for she was gazing at the bearded photograph without revulsion.
"Of course," she answered, hardly attending.
"Even though he killed this man—even though he came across Europe to kill him?"
"You don't think it was deliberate yourself, even if he did do it."
"But can you doubt that he did?" cried Toye, quick to ignore the point she had made, yet none the less sincerely convinced upon the other. "I guess you wouldn't if you'd heard some of the things he said to me on the steamer; and he's made good every syllable since he landed. Why, it explains every single thing he's done and left undone. He'll strain every nerve to have Scruton ably defended, but he won't see the man he's defending; says himself that he can't face him!"