It was the Padre's voice that finally guided her. He read without hesitation or doubt the object of her mission.
"Yes," he said simply. "I am Moreton Bucklaw, the man accused of your father's murder."
Suddenly the girl's head drooped forward, and her hands covered her face as though to shut out the terrible truth which the man's words conveyed.
"O God!" she cried. "Then she was not lying to me."
Buck's eyes, fierce, almost savage at the sight of the girl's despair, shot a swift glance at his friend. It was a glance which only the white-haired man could have understood. To the looker-on it would have expressed a terrible threat. To the Padre it was the expression of a heart torn to shreds between love and friendship.
"If she told you I killed him--she was lying."
The man had not raised his tone. There was no other emotion in his manner than distress for the girl's suffering.
Joan looked up, and a gleam of hope struggled through her despair.
"Then it's not true? Oh, I knew it--I knew it! She was lying to me. She was lying to me as she has always lied to me. Oh, thank God, thank God!" She dropped back into the chair that had been placed for her, but which up to that moment she had ignored.
The two men waited for her emotion to pass. Buck as yet had nothing to say. And the Padre knew that until she was mistress of herself words would only be wasted.
Presently she looked up. Her eyes were dry, and the agony that had sent her upon her headlong mission was passing. The Padre's relief showed in the smile with which he met her glance. Buck stood steadily regarding her, longing to help her, but knowing that his time had not come yet.
"Tell me," she said, struggling hard for steadiness. "Tell me all--for I--I cannot seem to understand anything."
The Padre bowed his head.
"You know your own story. It is all substantially true that Mercy Lascelles has told you. All, that is, except that she claims I killed your father. She did not see your father die. I did. I was the only one who saw him die--by his own hand, a desperate and ruined man. Listen, and I will tell you the whole story without concealing one tittle of my own doings and motives."
Half an hour passed while the man's even voice recited without emotion all the details leading up to Charles Stanmore's death. He kept nothing back--his own love for the then handsome Mercy, and the passionate insult he had offered her, when, in her love for the dead man, she became his housekeeper. He intended that, for Buck's sake, this girl should know everything, nor had he the least desire for any concealment on personal account. He did not spare his own folly and the cowardice of his flight. He felt that concealment of any sort could only injure Buck, whom at all costs he must not hurt. He even analyzed, with all the logic at his command, Mercy Lascelles' motives in accusing him. He declared his belief in her desire to marry the widowed man and her own consequent hatred of himself, whose presence was a constant thwart to her plans.