Lowndes leant forward across the compartment: there was a shrewd look in the spectacled eyes. 

 "Not that I know of," he said again, but with a different intonation. "I have often wondered!" 

 "Did you ask her?" 

 "Yes; she said not." 

 "Then what do you mean?" cried Harry indignantly. "Do you think my mother would tell you a lie?" 

 "Your mother is the most loyal little woman in England," was the reply. "I certainly think that she would keep her end up in the day of battle." 

 Harry ground his teeth. He could have struck the florid able face whose every look showed a calm assumption of his father's infamy. 

 "You take it all for granted!" he fumed; "you, who say you were his friend. How am I to believe in such friendship? True friends are not so ready to believe the worst. Oh! it makes my blood boil to hear you talk; it makes me hate myself for accepting kindness at your hands. You have been very kind, I know," added Harry in a breaking voice; "but—but for God's sake don't let us speak about it any more!" And he flung up a newspaper to hide his quivering lips; for now he was hoping against hope and believing against belief. 

 Was it not in black and white in all the papers? How could it be otherwise than true? Rightly or wrongly, the world had found his father guilty; and was he to insult all and sundry who failed to repudiate the verdict of the world? 

 Harry was one who could not endure to be in the wrong with anybody: his weakness in every quarrel was an incongruous hankering for the good opinion of the enemy, and this was intensified in the case of one who was obviously anxious to be his friend. To appear ungracious or ungrateful was equally repugnant to Harry Ringrose, and no sooner was he master of his emotion than he lowered the paper in order to add a few words which should remove any such impression. 

 Gordon Lowndes sat dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief that he made haste to put away, as though it was his eyes he had been wiping, which indeed was Harry's first belief. But the gold-rimmed glasses were not displaced, and, so far from a tear, there was an expression behind them for which Harry could not then find the name; nevertheless, it 

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