Hilda was inexorable. “You know yourself how you are situated. You have only a day or two to live,” she said, in an impressive voice. “You must do it at once, or never. You have postponed it all your life. Now, at this last moment, you must make up for it. Will you die with an act of injustice unconfessed on your conscience?”

He paused and struggled. “I could—if it were not for you,” he answered.

“Then do it for me,” Hilda cried. “Do it for me! I ask it of you not as a favour, but as a right. I DEMAND it!” She stood, white, stern, inexorable, by his couch, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

He paused once more. Then he murmured feebly, in a querulous tone, “What witnesses? Whom do you wish to be present?”

Hilda spoke clearly and distinctly. She had thought it all out with herself beforehand. “Such witnesses as will carry absolute conviction to the mind of all the world; irreproachable, disinterested witnesses; official witnesses. In the first place, a commissioner of oaths. Then a Plymouth doctor, to show that you are in a fit state of mind to make a confession. Next, Mr. Horace Mayfield, who defended my father. Lastly, Dr. Blake Crawford, who watched the case on your behalf at the trial.”

“But, Hilda,” I interposed, “we may possibly find that they cannot come away from London just now. They are busy men, and likely to be engaged.”

“They will come if I pay their fees. I do not mind how much this costs me. What is money compared to this one great object of my life?”

“And then—the delay! Suppose that we are too late?”

“He will live some days yet. I can telegraph up at once. I want no hole-and-corner confession, which may afterwards be useless, but an open avowal before the most approved witnesses. If he will make it, well and good; if not, my life-work will have failed. But I had rather it failed than draw back one inch from the course which I have laid down for myself.”

I looked at the worn face of Sebastian. He nodded his head slowly. “She has conquered,” he answered, turning upon the pillow. “Let her have her own way. I hid it for years, for science’ sake. That was my motive, Cumberledge, and I am too near death to lie. Science has now nothing more to gain or lose by me. I have served her well, but I am worn out in her service. Maisie may do as she will. I accept her ultimatum.”

We telegraphed up, at once. Fortunately, both men were disengaged, and both keenly interested in the case. By that evening, Horace Mayfield was talking it all over with me in the hotel at Southampton. “Well, Hubert, my boy,” he said, “a woman, we know, can do a great deal”; he smiled his familiar smile, like a genial fat toad; “but if your Yorke-Bannerman succeeds in getting a confession out of Sebastian, she’ll extort my admiration.” He paused a moment, then he added, in an afterthought: “I say that she’ll extort my admiration; but, mind you, I don’t know that I shall feel inclined to believe it. The facts have always appeared to me—strictly between ourselves, you know—to admit of only one explanation.”

“Wait and see,” I answered. “You think it more likely that Miss Wade will have persuaded Sebastian to confess to things that never happened than that he will convince you of Yorke-Bannerman’s innocence?”

The great Q.C. fingered his cigarette-holder affectionately.

“You hit it first time,” he answered. “That is precisely my attitude. The evidence against our poor friend was so peculiarly black. It would take a great deal to make me disbelieve it.”

“But surely a confession—”

“Ah, well, let me hear the confession, and then I shall be better able to judge.”

Even as he spoke Hilda had entered the room.

“There will be no difficulty about that, Mr. Mayfield. You shall hear it, and I trust that it will make you repent for taking so black a view of the case of your own client.”

“Without prejudice, Miss Bannerman, without prejudice,” said the lawyer, with some confusion. “Our conversation is entirely between ourselves, and to the world I have always upheld that your father was an innocent man.”

But such distinctions are too subtle for a loving woman.

“He WAS an innocent man,” said she, angrily. “It was your business not only to believe it, but to prove it. You have neither believed it nor proved it; but if you will come upstairs with me, I will show you that I have done both.”

Mayfield glanced at me and shrugged his fat shoulders. Hilda had led the way, and we both followed her. In the room of the sick man our other witnesses were waiting: a tall, dark, austere man who was introduced to me as Dr. Blake Crawford, whose name I had heard as having watched the case for Sebastian at the time of the investigation. There were present also a commissioner of oaths, and Dr. Mayby, a small local practitioner, whose attitude towards the great scientist was almost absurdly reverential. The three men were grouped at the foot of the bed, and Mayfield and I joined them. Hilda stood beside the dying man, and rearranged the pillow against which he was propped. Then she held some brandy to his lips. “Now!” said she.

The stimulant brought a shade of colour into his ghastly cheeks, and the old quick, intelligent gleam came back into his deep sunk eyes.

“A remarkable woman, gentlemen,” said he, “a very noteworthy woman. I had prided myself that my willpower was the most powerful in the country—I had never met any to match it—but I do not mind admitting that, for firmness and tenacity, this lady is my equal. She was anxious that I should adopt one course of action. I was determined to adopt another. Your presence here is a proof that she has prevailed.”

He paused for breath, and she gave him another small sip of the brandy.

“I execute her will ungrudgingly and with the conviction that it is the right and proper course for me to take,” he continued. “You will forgive me some of the ill which I have done you, Maisie, when I tell you that I really died this morning—all unknown to Cumberledge and you—and that nothing but my will force has sufficed to keep spirit and body together until I should carry out your will in the manner which you suggested. I shall be glad when I have finished, for the effort is a painful one, and I long for the peace of dissolution. It is now a quarter to seven. I have every hope that I may be able to leave before eight.”

It was strange to hear the perfect coolness with which he discussed his own approaching dissolution. Calm, pale, and impassive, his manner was that of a professor addressing his class. I had seen him speak so to a ring of dressers in the old days at Nathaniel’s.

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