But he passed on and went to shut himself up in his study with his mental anguish that was compounded of so many and so diverse emotions.

He needed above all things to be alone and to think, if thought were possible to a mind so distraught as his own.

There were now so many things to be faced, considered, and dealt with.

First and foremost--and this was perhaps the product of inevitable reaction--was the consideration of his own duplicity, his villainous betrayal of trust undertaken deliberately, but with an aim very different from that which would appear.

He perceived how men must assume now, when the truth of Samoval's death became known as become known it must--that he had deliberately fastened upon another his own crime.