Suddenly he seemed to recover himself, and looked up.
"You," he said slowly, "you are Montagu Durant, the fellow she was engaged to before she married Rotherby."
"Rotherby's friend," Ford went on. "The chap who stuck to him through thick and thin--to be betrayed in the end. I know all about you, you see, though you haven't placed me yet."
"No, I can't place you," Durant said. "I don't think we ever knew each other very well. You will have to tell me who you are."
"Later--later," said Ford. "No, you never knew me very well. It was always you and Rotherby, you and Rotherby. You never looked at any one else, till that row at the 'Varsity when he got kicked out. Yes," with a sudden, sharp sigh, "I was a 'Varsity man too. I admired Leonard Rotherby in those days. Poor old Leo! He knew how to hit a boundary as well as any fellow! You never forgave him, I suppose, for marrying your girl?"
There was a pause, and the fevered eyes sought Durant's face. The answer came at length very slowly.
"I could have forgiven him," Durant said, "if he had stuck to her and made her happy."
"Ah! There came the rub. But did Rotherby ever stick to anything? It was a jolly good thing he died--for all concerned. Yet, you know, he cared for her to the last. Blackguard as he was, he carried her in his heart right up to his death. I tell you I was with him, and I know."
There was strong insistence in the man's words. Durant could feel the racing pulse leap and quiver under his hand. He leaned forward a little, looking closely into the drawn face.
"I think you have talked enough," he said. "Try to get some rest."
"I haven't raved," said Ford, with confidence. "It has done me good to talk. I can't help thinking of Leo Rotherby. My brain runs on him. He wanted to see you--horribly--before he died. I believe he'd have asked your forgiveness. But you wouldn't have given it to him, I suppose? You will never forgive him in your heart?"
Again the answer did not come at once. Durant was frowning a little--the frown of a man who tries to fathom his own secret impulses.
"I think," he said at last, "that if I had seen him and he had asked for it, I should not have refused my forgiveness."
"No one ever refused Rotherby anything," said the dying man, with a curious, half-humorous twist of his mouth under its dark moustache.