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 a weapon the knowledge would be in the hands of Anson and Aunt Cassie and even John Pentland himself.

He was talking again with the same passionate earnestness.

"I shan't let it make any difference, so long as Sybil will have me, but, you see, it's very hard to explain, because it isn't the way it seems. I want you to understand that my mother is a wonderful woman. . . . I wouldn't bother to explain, to say anything . . . except to Sybil and to you."

"Sabine has told me about her."

"Mrs. Callendar has known her for a long time. . . . They're great friends," said Jean. "She understands."

"But she never told me . . . that. You mean that she's known it all along?"

"It's not an easy thing to tell . . . especially here in Durham, and I fancy she thought it might make trouble for me . . . after she saw what had happened to Sybil and me."

He went on quickly, telling her what he had told Sybil of his mother's story, trying to make her understand what he understood, and Sabine and even his stepfather, the distinguished old de Cyon. . . trying to explain a thing which he himself knew was not to be explained. He told her that his mother had refused to marry her lover, "because in his life outside . . . the life which had nothing to do with her . . . she discovered that there were things she couldn't support. She saw that it was better not to marry him . . . better for herself and for him and, most of all, for me. . . . He did things for the sake of success—mean, dishonorable things—which she couldn't forgive . . . and so she wouldn't marry him. And now, looking back, I think she was right. It made no great difference in her life. She lived abroad . . . as a widow, and very few people—not more than two or three—ever knew the truth. He never told because, being