"Can you listen to me, now ?" he asked, kindly.

She bowed her head in answer.

Mr.Pendril considered with himself for a moment, "I must caution you on one point," he said.

"If the aspect of Mr.Vanstone's character which I am now about to present to you seems in some respects at variance with your later experience, bear in mind that, when you first knew him twelve years since, he was a man of forty; and that, when I first knew him, he was a lad of nineteen." His next words raised the veil, and showed the irrevocable Past..