“This is good sense,” said the Colonel, “and the thing is a mystery.  Can you solve it?”

“You may be sure I can—­and woe is me—­I must.”

She hung her head, and her hands worked convulsively.

“Sir,” said she, after a pause, “suppose I could not tell the truth to all those people without subjecting the man I loved—­and I love him now dearer than ever—­to a terrible punishment for a mere folly done years ago, which now has become something much worse than folly—­but how?  Through his unhappy love for me!”

“These are dark words,” said the Colonel.  “How am I to understand them?”

“Dark as they are,” said Grace, “do they not explain my conduct in that bitter trial better than Julia Clifford’s guesses do, better than anything that has occurred since?”

“Mrs. Walter Clifford,” said the Colonel, with a certain awe, “I see there is something very grave here, and that it affects my son.  I begin to know you.  You waited till he was out of danger; but now you do me the honor to confide something to me which the world will not drag out of you.  So be it; I am a man and a soldier.  I have faced cavalry, and I can face the truth.  What is it?”

“Colonel Clifford,” said Grace, trembling like a leaf, “the truth will cut you to the heart, and will most likely kill me.  Now that I have gone so far, you may well say, ‘Tell it me;’ but the words once past my lips can never be recalled.  Oh, what shall I do?  What shall I do?”

The struggle overpowered her, and almost for the first time in her life she turned half faint and yet hysterical; and such was her condition that the brave Colonel was downright alarmed, and rang hastily for his people.  He committed her to the charge of Mrs. Milton.  It seemed cruel to demand any further explanation from her just then; so brave a girl, who had gone so far with him, would be sure to tell him sooner or later.  Meantime he sat sombre and agitated, oppressed by a strange sense of awe and mystery, and vague misgiving.  While he brooded thus, a footman brought him in a card upon a salver:  “The Reverend Alleyn Meredith.”  “Do I know this gentleman?” said the Colonel.

“I think not, sir,” said the footman.

“What is he like?”

“Like a beneficed clergyman, sir.”

Colonel Clifford was not in the humor for company; but it was not his habit to say not at home when he was at home; and being a magistrate, he never knew when a stranger sent in his card, that it might not be his duty to see him; so he told the footman to say, “that he was in point of fact engaged, but was at this gentleman’s service for a few minutes.”

The footman retired, and promptly ushered in a clergyman who seemed the model of an archdeacon or a wealthy rector.  Sleek and plump, without corpulence, neat boots, clothes black and glossy, waistcoat up to the throat, neat black gloves, a snowy tie, a face shaven like an egg, hair and eyebrows grizzled, cheeks rubicund, but not empurpled, as one who drank only his pint of port, but drank it seven days in the week.