"Can you," she said, "trust your vindication to us?"
"Entirely. It has come to be the last thing I think about," he answered, sadly; "and, if she may in any degree be spared, I beg that it may be the very last thing in your mind also."
A few minutes later Allan and I left the house. We dined in town and travelled back to Stony Lea together; but he offered me no explanation of the events of the afternoon, and I respected his silence.
Nearly a week passed before I heard anything further about the matter.
Then, one morning, Sir Lewin called upon me; he and Lady Maxwell had returned only the previous night from town. He made no reference to the circumstances of our last meeting, but asked me to come to the Hall that afternoon, as his wife was far from well, and anxious to see me.
I went accordingly and found her alone, lying upon a couch in her morning-room and looking sadly, terribly changed.
"I have asked you to come," she said, when I had taken a seat beside her, "because I want to tell you the truth about Allan Fortescue; he has suffered all these years through my fault, and I must make what reparation I can before—— It was I who really had the diamonds; I wanted them, and I employed him to bring me the casket; he did this quite innocently, as you will hear, not knowing what it contained. I had seen it on the dressing-table when I went to say good-night to my aunt just after she had gone to bed—about nine o'clock; but I was equally afraid either to take it then or to return to the room in the dark later on. Yet the chance seemed too good to be lost; I had never seen the casket left exposed before; it was always kept under lock and key. On my way downstairs I met Allan Fortescue, and we went together to the drawing-room. As we sat chatting by the fire, the plan I afterwards carried out occurred to me. The talk turned upon ghosts, and he said he should much like to meet one. Then I told him, truly, that one room in the house was said to be haunted by the spirit of a lady who had died there mysteriously on her return from a ball at which she had promised her lover to elope with him. I explained that nothing had been disturbed since the morning she was found there, dead in her chair before the mirror; but instead of the room to which the story really attached I described the one I had just left, and dared him to visit it after midnight. He said he had no fear, but I added that I should not believe in his courage unless he brought me as a proof a small ebony casket which had always stood upon the dressing-table. He laughed and said he would do even that, and I promised to meet him in the conservatory the following morning before breakfast to receive it and hear his experiences. He was quite strange to the house and did not know how any of the bedrooms were occupied except his own and his pupil's, which were in another wing. In the morning he handed me the casket as arranged. You know the rest; you see he was helpless in my hands."
"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that you wrecked a man's life for a few jewels?"
"'DON'T JUDGE ME TOO HARDLY,' SHE SAID, PITEOUSLY."