It was a fine, dry night, and feeling the need for exercise, Mr. Caryll set out to walk the short distance from St. James's Street to his lodging, with a link-boy, preceding him, for only attendant. Arrived home, he was met by Leduc with the information that Sir Richard Everard was awaiting him. He went in, and the next moment he was in the arms of his adoptive father.
Greetings and minor courtesies disposed of, Sir Richard came straight to the affair which he had at heart. “Well? How speeds the matter?”
Mr. Caryll's face became overcast. He sat down, a thought wearily.
“So far as Lord Ostermore is concerned, it speeds—as you would wish it. So far as I am concerned”—he paused and sighed—“I would that it sped not at all, or that I was out of it.”
Sir Richard looked at him with searching eyes. “How?” he asked. “What would you have me understand?”
“That in spite of all that has been said between us, in spite of all the arguments you have employed, and with which once, for a little while, you convinced me, this task is loathsome to me in the last degree. Ostermore is my father, and I can't forget it.”
“And your mother?” Sir Richard's tone was sad, rather than indignant; it spoke of a bitter disappointment, not at the events, but at this man whom he loved with all a father's love.
“It were idle to go over it all again. I know everything that you would—that you could—say. I have said it all to myself again and again, in a vain endeavor to steel myself to the business to which you plighted me. Had Ostermore been different, perhaps it had been easier. I cannot say. As it is, I see in him a weakling, a man of inferior intellect, who does not judge things as you and I judge them, whose life cannot have been guided by the rules that serve for men of stronger purpose.”
“You find excuses for him? For his deed?” cried Sir Richard, and his voice was full of horror now; he stared askance at his adoptive son.
“No, no! Oh, I don't know. On my soul and conscience, I don't know!” cried Mr. Caryll, like one in pain. He rose and moved restlessly about the room. “No,” he pursued more calmly, “I don't excuse him. I blame him—more bitterly than you can think; perhaps more bitterly even than do you, for I have had a look into his mind and see the exact place held there by my mother's memory. I can judge and condemn him; but I can't execute him; I can't betray him. I don't think I could do it even if he were not my father.”