Lewis looked at him with a startled air.
"Do you think so?" he said. "But then there would have been no hope for me," he added, with simplicity.
"That should be of no consequence in comparison with what was right. You see," said the lawyer, with true enjoyment, "that is just the difference between your foreign ways and what you call the English method. We think nothing amiss here of a young man 'speerin' the bonnie lass hersel'.' It is natural, as, after all, she is the person most concerned. But what we cannot away with," said Mr. Allenerly, "is any sort of mystery, even when it's quite innocent, about a man's name or his position, or what we call his identity. There's no social crime like going under a false name."
Lewis' countenance had grown longer and longer under this address. He grew pale; there was no question on which he was so susceptible.
"But," he cried, with a guilty flush of colour, "it is not a false name. It was his wish, his last wish, that I should take it. If I wavered, it was because I was sick at my heart. I did not care. In such circumstances a false name——That is what cannot be said. It is a wrong," he said, vehemently, "to me."
"You may be justified in taking the name," said the lawyer, "but not in using it, which is what I complain of, with intention to deceive."
Never culprit was more self-convicted than Lewis. His courage abandoned him altogether.
"If this is so, then I am a—a thing which I will not name."
"You are just a young man not wiser than your kind, and that has made a mistake: and I think it has done more harm than good. Margaret Murray, she cannot get it out of her head that, being of no kent Murrays, no name that you could give her, you are not only no Murray at all, which is true enough, but just a sort of upstart, a deceiver——"
"Which is true also," said Lewis, looking at him with eyes that were very pathetic and wistful, "if she thought badly of me in what you call my false appearance, they all thought more badly of myself. Perhaps you did so also. They described me as a designing person, upstart, as you say, that wheedled an old man into making me his heir. Now that you know me, you know a little if that was true: but they thought so all of them. Should I have gone and said, 'Here am I, this deceiver, this cheat, this dependent that took a base advantage of his benefactor. Behold me, I have robbed you of your money. I have cajoled your father'!"