The man fairly blinked at her, owl-like.  He was beyond speech.

“Wasn’t it Richard?” she hurried on.  “Wasn’t it Richard Hartley?  Ah, if I could only say it without seeming so contemptibly heartless!  If only I needn’t say it at all!  But it must be said because of what depends upon it.  Think!  Go back to the beginning!  Wasn’t it Richard who first began to suspect my uncle?  Didn’t he tell you or write to you what he had discovered, and so set you upon the right track?  And after you had—­well, just fallen into their hands, with no hope of ever escaping yourself—­to say nothing of bringing Arthur back—­wasn’t it Richard who came to your rescue and brought it all to victory?  Oh, Ste. Marie, I must be just to him as well as to you!  Don’t you see that?  However grateful I may be to you for what you have done—­suffered—­I cannot, in justice, give you what I was to have given you, since it is, after all, Richard who has saved my brother.  I cannot, can I?  Surely you must see it.  And you must see how it hurts me to have to say it.  I had hoped that—­you would understand—­without my speaking.”

Still the man sat in his trance of astonishment, speechless.  For the first time in his life he was brought face to face with the amazing, the appalling injustice of which a woman is capable when her heart is concerned.  This girl wished to believe that to Richard Hartley belonged the credit of rescuing her brother, and lo! she believed it.  A score of juries might have decided against her, a hundred proofs controverted her decision, but she would have been deaf and blind.  It is only women who accomplish miracles of reasoning like that.

Ste. Marie took a long breath and he started to speak, but in the end shook his head and remained silent.  Through the whirl and din of falling skies he was yet able to see the utter futility of words.  He could have adduced a hundred arguments to prove her absurdity.  He could have shown her that before he ever read Hartley’s note he had decided upon Stewart’s guilt—­and for much better reasons than Hartley had.  He could have pointed out to her that it was he, not Hartley, who discovered young Benham’s whereabouts, that it was he who summoned Hartley there, and that, as a matter of fact, Hartley need not have come at all, since the boy had been persuaded to go home in any case.

He thought of all these things and more, and in a moment of sheer anger at her injustice he was on the point of stating them, but he shook his head and remained silent.  After all, of what use was speech?  He knew that it could make no impression upon her, and he knew why.  For some reason, in some way, she had turned during his absence to Richard Hartley, and there was nothing more to be said.  There was no treachery on Hartley’s part.  He knew that, and it never even occurred to him to blame his friend.  Hartley was as faithful as any one who ever lived.  It seemed to be nobody’s fault.  It had just happened.