He would have had but to cry, "I am the son of Sir Richard Devine.

Come with me to yonder house, and I will prove to you that I have but just quitted it,"-- to place his innocence beyond immediate question.

That course of action was impossible now.

Knowing Sir Richard as he did, and believing, moreover, that in his raging passion the old man had himself met and murdered the destroyer of his honour, the son of Lord Bellasis and Lady Devine saw himself in a position which would compel him either to sacrifice himself, or to purchase a chance of safety at the price of his mother's dishonour and the death of the man whom his mother had deceived.

If the outcast son were brought a prisoner to North End House, Sir Richard--now doubly oppressed of fate--would be certain to deny him; and he would be compelled, in self-defence, to reveal a story which would at once bring his mother to open infamy, and send to the gallows the man who had been for twenty years deceived--the man to whose kindness he owed education and former fortune.