Was this too the secret which he let out in his cups to Randall Holmes and which drove the young man from his society?
And Betty?
Boyce was a devil.

She wished he were dead.

And her words: "You have behaved worse to others.
I don't wonder at your shrinking from showing your face here." How much did Betty know?
There was the lost week--in Carlisle ?--in poor Althea's life.

And then there were Boyce's half confessions, the glimpses he had afforded me into the tormented soul.

To me he had condemned himself out of his own mouth.
I repeat that, sitting there paralysed by the sudden shock of it, I knew--not that the man was speaking the literal truth--God forbid!--but that Boyce was, in some degree, responsible for Althea's death.
"Calling me names won't alter the facts, Sir Anthony," said Gedge, with a touch of insolence.