Breton sprang to his feet. "Look here, Chris, I should have told you of all this long ago. I didn't know that you had heard. I wish to God I had spoken to you. But as Heaven is my witness, Rachel is a saint. I'm a miserable cur—a misery to myself and a misery to everyone else. But she——"
"You've been fools, the couple of you," he answered sternly. "It's no use cursing now. I won't go and urge Rachel to tell Roddy—she must do that of her own free will—All our hands are tied. It depends upon the steps that Roddy takes, and after all the old lady may never have told him. But I've warned you, Frank. It's up to you to do the right thing."
"What do you want me to do?" asked Breton.
"I don't know what you can do. You must see for yourself—only, Frank," here Christopher's voice became softer, "by all our old friendship and by any affection that you may have left for me, I do conjure you to play fair by Rachel and her husband. Rachel is very, very young. Roddy is helpless——"
"That's enough," Breton cried. "My God, Christopher, of you could realize the weeks I've been having you wouldn't think, perhaps, so badly of me. It's been more, I swear, than any mortal flesh can endure. I'm driven, driven—I'm at the end.... But she's safe from me, safe now and safe forever. And that now that old woman should step in—now."
Christopher came and again put his arm on Breton's shoulder and held him up, it might seem, with more than physical strength.
His affection for Breton was an affection sprung from his very knowledge of the man's weaknesses. He had in him that British quality of ruthless condemnation for the sinner whom he did not know and sentimental weakness for the sinner whom he did. He had seen Francis Breton through a thousand scrapes, he would see him, doubtless, through a thousand more.
"We'll say no more now, old boy—You look done up—I won't worry you, but if you want me here I am and I promise not to lecture. Only you owe me some confidence, you do indeed."
Breton got up and stood there, with his hand pressed to his forehead. "What you've told me," he said. "I must do something ... something ... it's all been my fault. If they should touch her——"
Then, turning to Christopher, he said: "You are the only friend I've got, and I know it. I do value it—only lately I've been going to bits again. If it weren't for you and little Miss Rand I swear I'd have gone altogether. You are a brick, Christopher. Another day I'll come to you and tell you everything. To-night I'm simply past talking."