"Matters which concern yourself alone, Edward! How can that be? The terrible wrong of which John Brancker has been the victim concerns me, as my father's son, at least as much as it does you, and----"
But at this moment the door was opened, and one of the clerks thrust his head into the room.
"Lord Elstree to see you, sir," said the man.
As his lordship entered by one door, Clement made his way out by another.
The mental conflict which he went through in the course of the next few days was something altogether foreign to his experience. He recognized to the full the gravity of the reasons by which his brother had been influenced in acting as he had. In a small town like Ashdown social ostracism, and that of a most bitter and degrading kind, would be the inevitable portion of every member of the Hazeldine family after once the truth should have been avowed. As far as he was concerned, the practice he had got together by such laborious patience would be almost wholly ruined, and he would have to begin life afresh in some far away spot. And, then his mother and sister! To them the blow would be infinitely worse than either to himself or Edward.
On the other hand, the thought of John Brancker slowly wearing out his life under the shadow of a crime which a dozen words from him or his brother would clear away for ever, was altogether intolerable to him. "Right is right, and wrong, wrong all the world over," he said to himself more than once. "There can be no wrong without suffering; but to knowingly let the innocent suffer for the guilty is worse than the commission of the wrong itself."
He arose one morning after a sleepless night. "This shall be put an end to, come what may," he said, grimly, to himself.
As soon as he had finished his morning rounds he went straight to Nairn Cottage. He found John busy in his garden, where much of his time was spent nowadays.
"Can you spare me five minutes here in the summerhouse?" said Clem. "I have something particular to say to you."
"I can spare you the whole day, Mr. Clement, if it comes to that," answered John, with rather a dismal smile. There was an unusual gravity on the young doctor's face which he could not help noticing. He wondered what further bad news he was about to be told.