"Little darling, not a bit of it. There's no shame for you to bear. But let me go on. You remember that day when I met you in Hyde Park?"
"The day?" I said.
"The day, Heather. You and I walked back to the house in Hanbury Square together. You were sent out of the room. I had a long talk with your stepmother and with your father—no matter now what was said. I was beside myself for a time, but I made up my mind then that whatever happened I'd woo you and win you and get you and keep you! Something else also haunted me, and that was the fact that your father, Major Grayson, was not in the least like the sort of man I had expected him to be. I have, Heather, I believe, the power of reading character, and if ever there was a man who had a perfectly beautiful, honourable expression, if ever there was a man who could not do the sort of thing which Major Grayson had been accused of doing, that man was your father. Before I left the house I was as certain of his innocence as I was of my own."
"You darling!" I said. I stooped and kissed his hand.
"Then I thought of you, and I said to myself: 'She's Major Grayson's worthy daughter,' and—I gave myself up to thinking out this thing. People can go to the British Museum, Heather, and can read the newspapers of any date, so I went there on the following morning and read up the whole of your father's trial. I read the evidence for and against him, and I discovered that there was a great deal of talk about a Gideon Dalrymple—the Honourable Gideon Dalrymple, as he was called. He was mixed up in the thing. I went farther into particulars, and discovered that this man was the brother of Lady Helen. I sat and thought over that fact for a long time. I took it home to my rooms with me and thought it over there; I thought it over and over and over, but I could not see daylight, only I was more and more certain that your father was innocent.
"Then I got your letter, and that letter was just enough to stir me up and to make me wild, to put me into a sort of frenzy. So at last I said to myself: 'There's nothing like bearding the lion in his den,' and one day, quite early in the morning, I called at the house in Hanbury Square. I asked to see Lady Helen Dalrymple, and as I stood at the door a boy came up with a telegram. The telegram was taken in, and I was also admitted, for I gave the sort of message that would cause a woman of her description to see me. She was in her boudoir, and she came forward in a frenzy of distraction and grief, and said: 'What do you want? Go away! I am in dreadful trouble; I won't see you—it's like your impertinence to come here!'
"'I won't keep you long,' I said. 'I want to get at once from you Colonel Gideon Dalrymple's private address, for I have something of the utmost importance to talk over with him.'
"'What?' she screamed. 'You can't see him—you can't possibly see him. He's very ill. I've just had a telegram from a nursing home where he is staying. I am on my way to see him myself. My poor, poor brother!'
"'Oh, then, if he is ill, of course he'll confess,' I said. 'I may as well go with you. He has got to confess, sooner or later, and the sooner he does it the better.'"
"Vernon! You said that to her?"