“But—­but doesn’t it seem that if I—­did him a wrong, I ought to be willing to set it straight?”

“Well, naturally!” said Canning, and smiled a little, sadly, to see how white and sorrowful-eyed she looked.  “If you did him a wrong.  But that’s just the point.  I’m afraid I can’t agree with the somewhat extreme view this friend of the poor fellow’s seems to have put forward....  By the way,” he added, finding the natural question popping in so suitably here, “who is this man that has talked with you about it, Carlisle?  Your mother didn’t go into particulars.”

Carlisle felt some surprise.  “Oh—­I supposed she told you.  Dr. Vivian—­you remember—­who ...”

The name took Canning completely aback.

“Vivian?—­no!... That chap!...”

Both remembered in the same moment his quizzical complaint that this man was his hoodoo.  Both felt that the pleasantry had a somewhat gritty flavor just now.

“I hadn’t thought of him,” said Canning, at once putting down his surprise and explaining it, “because I didn’t think you knew him at all.  In fact, I didn’t know you’d ever seen him but once, or perhaps twice....”

Carlisle regretted that mamma had not explained all this.  “I haven’t more than three or four times....  Twice when I was with you, you remember, and then I met him again at Mr. Beirne’s and the Cooneys’—­some cousins of mine.  You see—­he was a great friend of—­his....”

“And I suppose he has worried you about this every time he got anywhere near you?”

“No,” Carlisle answered, laboriously, “I don’t think he has ever mentioned it—­since the first.  Of course I’ve had hardly any conversation with him—­and it’s always been about the Works.  You know, I told you he usually talked to me about that—­”

He said that he remembered; and each was then aware that the harmony of a moment ago had somehow slipped away from them.  Canning, indeed, instead of being enlightened by the explanation, was more bewildered than ever.  How could it be that this man, her father’s assailant in the newspapers, the religious fellow whom Carlisle had never mentioned but to belittle, should have been the recipient of intimate confidences which she had withheld from him, her future husband?  Naturally he could not understand in the least.  However, glancing at her still face, he forbore to put another question.

“Well, that’s got nothing to do with it anyway,” he said, lightly, dismissing the side-issue.  “Now, let’s see....  Sit back comfortably, my dear, and we’ll take it all quietly from the beginning....”

Hugo had got his facts from Mrs. Heth, and nothing had happened yet to suggest that they were in any way inaccurate.  On the contrary, they seemed to have received subtle moral corroboration, so instinctive was it for the lover to lean backward from the views foisted upon Carlisle by her singular and religious confidant.  That he himself was capable of coloring the case, attorney-wise, to suit the common interest did not really cross his mind.