"What do you mean by all that, Uncle Ryder," she asked.
"I mean that if we are going to admit this Quixotic motive in de Mountford's attitude now, there can only be one mainspring for it."
"It is perhaps a little difficult----" he said somewhat hesitatingly.
"You mean," she interposed quietly, "that if Luke is taking this awful crime upon himself for the sake of another, that other can only be a woman whom he loves."
"Well," retorted Sir Thomas, "it is not you, my dear, I presume, who killed this bricklayer from Clapham."
She did not reply immediately: but her lips almost framed themselves into a smile. Luke and another woman! To Sir Thomas Ryder that seemed indeed a very simple explanation. Men have been known to do strange things, to endure much and to sacrifice everything for the sake of woman! But then Sir Thomas knew nothing of Luke, nothing more than what the latter chose to show of his inward self to the world. The memory of those few moments in the room in Fairfax Mansions laughed the other man's suggestion to scorn. Louisa shook her head and said simply:
"No, Uncle Ryder, I did not kill the Clapham bricklayer in the cab."
"And you won't admit that Luke may be shielding another woman?" said Sir Thomas, with just the faintest semblance of a sneer.
"I won't say that," she replied gravely. "You see, I don't really know. I would take a dying oath at this moment--if I were on the point of death--that Luke never committed that abominable crime. I won't even say that he is incapable of it. I'll only swear that he did not do it. And yet he is silent when he is accused. Then, to me, the only possible, the only logical conclusion is that he is shielding some one else."
"Put the question directly to him, I mean?"
"That his own stick condemns him, and that he would plead guilty at his trial."
"He never told you directly or indirectly that he killed the man?"
For the space of one second only did Louisa hesitate. She had asked Luke the direct question: "Was it you who killed that man?" and he had replied: "It was I." She had asked it then, determined to know the truth, convinced that she would know the truth when he gave reply. And she did learn the truth then and there, not as Luke hoped that she would interpret it, but as it really was. He had never really lied to her, for she had never been deceived. Now, she did not wish to hide anything from Sir Thomas Ryder, the only man in the whole world who could help her to prove Luke's innocence in spite of himself: therefore, when her uncle reiterated his question somewhat sharply, she replied quite frankly, looking straight up at him: