Lance rose to his feet again. He stared blankly for a minute or two, then his eyes suddenly blazed.
"You're Mestaer! Good God! Then you're the man that knows! You can tell me ... what happened that night!"
"Yes; I can tell you: and I will. Mayne knows, she knows, I know. Nobody else."
A shiver ran through Lancelot; he seemed on the brink of a hundred questions; he choked them back.
"Speak, can't you?" he said.
Hubert spoke. He told his story from the beginning, making Melicent's attitude towards himself throughout quite clear. He did not dwell on his own feelings, but made it no secret that he had come to England solely in the hope of being able to obtain her regard.
Lancelot listened to it all, as to information respecting some girl whom he had never known.
"That she should have undergone all this, and never told me a word!"
"I can see where her difficulty came in," said Bert "Before she engaged herself to you, she had guessed who I am. That altered everything. If you can see what I mean, it turned the past into the present. She could not speak to you of Mestaer without adding that he was here, in England, under another name. That would have been giving me away—"
"Why couldn't she warn you that she should speak?"