Wingrave nodded to Morrison.

“You can go,” he said.  “Come back when I ring.”

They were alone!  Aynesworth threw down his hat and crossed the room until he was within a few feet of Wingrave.

“Well, sir?”

Aynesworth laughed a little unnaturally.

“I had to come,” he said.  “It is humiliating, but the discipline is good for me!  I was determined to come and see once more the man who has made an utter and complete fool of me.”

Wingrave eyed him coldly.

“If you would be good enough to explain,” he began.

“Oh, yes, I’ll explain,” Aynesworth answered.  “I engaged myself to you as secretary, didn’t I, and I told you the reason at the time?  I wanted to make a study of you.  I wanted to trace the effect of your long period of isolation upon your subsequent actions.  I entered upon my duties—­how you must have smiled at me behind my back!  Never was a man more completely and absolutely deceived.  I lived with you, was always by your side, I was there professedly to study your actions and the method of them.  And yet you found it a perfectly simple matter to hoodwink me whenever you chose!”

“In what respect?” Wingrave asked calmly.

“Every respect!” Aynesworth answered.  “Let me tell you two things which happened to me yesterday.  I met a young New York stockbroker, named Nesbitt, in London, and in common with all London, I suppose, by this time, I learnt the secret of all those anonymous contributions to the hospitals and other charitable causes during the last year.”

“Go on,” Wingrave said.

“I have come here on purpose to tell you what I think you are,” Aynesworth said.  “You are the greatest hypocrite unhanged.  You affect to hate your fellows and to love evil-doers.  You deceived the whole world, and you deceived me.  I know you now for what you are.  You conceived your evil plans, but when the time came for carrying them out, you funked it every time.  You had that silly little woman on the steamer in your power, and you yourself, behind your own back, released her with that Marconigram to her husband, sent by yourself.  You brought the boy Nesbitt face to face with ruin, and to his face you offered him no mercy.  Behind his back you employ a lawyer to advance him your own money to pay your own debt.  You decline to give a single penny away in charity and, as stealthily as possible, you give away in one year greater sums than any other man has ever parted with.  You decline to help the poor little orphan child of the village organist, and secretly you have her brought up in your own home, and stop the sale of your pictures for the sake of the child whom you had only once contemptuously addressed.  Can you deny any one of these things?”

“No!” Wingrave answered quietly, “I cannot.”

“And I thought you a strong man,” Aynesworth continued, aggrieved and contemptuous.  “I nearly went mad with fear when I heard that it was you who were the self-appointed guardian of Juliet Lundy.  I looked upon this as one more, the most diabolical of all your schemes!”