"But is that all? You know as well as I that it is not. Think of all he has suffered and gone through. Consider----"
"I have considered--for I can foresee all you would urge. I have thought it over long ago from every possible point of view. It is for you to consider and to realize that there is an altogether different way of looking at the affair from the one you have chosen to adopt, one, too, which concerns you and me very nearly. With your good leave, I will proceed to make clear to you what I mean."
He got up, and crossing to a side table, poured out for himself a glass of water.
"It was within a couple of hours of hearing of my father's death," resumed Edward, "that I read the letter which you have seen to-day for the first time. The news had been broken to me by the very man we have been talking of--I mean by Judd--and I had just come back from the Bank after viewing my father's body. I will leave you to imagine the effect the letter had on me at such a time. Knowing what I did, no one could have been more surprised than I at the turn taken by the affair at the inquest, when one little piece of circumstantial evidence after another cropped up, all tending to bring home the crime to John Brancker, and it was a great shock to me when he was committed for trial. Had you been in my place, rather than let him go to prison, in all probability you would have made public the facts embodied in your father's letter."
"I certainly should have done so," said Clement, gravely.
"I preferred to hold on, taking care, meanwhile, to secure an eminent advocate for the defense. There were many weak links in the chain of evidence, and it seemed to me that no jury would convict the prisoner without something stronger to go upon. The event proved that I was right in my belief. John Brancker was acquitted."
"Truly so; but can you even faintly realize the mental torture he must have suffered meanwhile? Can you----"
Edward held up his hand. "My dear fellow, I hope you do not for one moment imagine that I did not feel keenly for Brancker. My heart bled for him many and many a time. I seemed to myself to have added ten years to my age during those weeks that he lay in prison. I would willingly have given half of all I had in the world if by so doing I could have reversed the verdict of the Coroner's jury. But all that belongs to the past. What I want you to do now is to realize for yourself what would have been the effect on the fortunes of those he left behind him had I made known the contents of my father's letter. In the first place, your mother and sister would have been reduced to pauperism, or next door to it."
"How could that have come about?" demanded Clem, with a startled look.
"Because, had it become known that my father committed suicide deliberately and intentionally, and without any mitigating plea of mental derangement, his life policy of twelve thousand pounds would have been forfeited; and that, as you are aware, forms nearly the sole resource of your mother and sister."