We telegraphed up, at once. Fortunately, both men were disengaged, and both keenly interested in the case. By that evening, Horace Mayfield was talking it all over with me in the hotel at Southampton. “Well, Hubert, my boy,” he said, “a woman, we know, can do a great deal”; he smiled his familiar smile, like a genial fat toad; “but if your Yorke-Bannerman succeeds in getting a confession out of Sebastian, she'll extort my admiration.” He paused a moment, then he added, in an afterthought: “I say that she'll extort my admiration; but, mind you, I don't know that I shall feel inclined to believe it. The facts have always appeared to me—strictly between ourselves, you know—to admit of only one explanation.”
“Wait and see,” I answered. “You think it more likely that Miss Wade will have persuaded Sebastian to confess to things that never happened than that he will convince you of Yorke-Bannerman's innocence?”
The great Q.C. fingered his cigarette-holder affectionately.
“You hit it first time,” he answered. “That is precisely my attitude. The evidence against our poor friend was so peculiarly black. It would take a great deal to make me disbelieve it.”
“But surely a confession—”
“Ah, well, let me hear the confession, and then I shall be better able to judge.”
Even as he spoke Hilda had entered the room.
“There will be no difficulty about that, Mr. Mayfield. You shall hear it, and I trust that it will make you repent for taking so black a view of the case of your own client.”
“Without prejudice, Miss Bannerman, without prejudice,” said the lawyer, with some confusion. “Our conversation is entirely between ourselves, and to the world I have always upheld that your father was an innocent man.”
But such distinctions are too subtle for a loving woman.