The Law and the Lady

circumstances have not been investigated. Crafty people have not been watched. Eustace! the conviction of some dreadful oversight, committed by you or by the persons who helped you, is firmly settled in my mind. The resolution to set that vile Verdict right was the first resolution that came to me when I first heard of it in the next room. We will set it right! We must set it right—for your sake, for my sake, for the sake of our children if we are blessed with children. Oh, my own love, don't look at me with those cold eyes! Don't answer me in those hard tones! Don't treat me as if I were talking ignorantly and madly of something that can never be!'

Still I never roused him. His next words were spoken compassionately rather than coldly—that was all.

'My defense was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land,' he said. 'After such men have done their utmost, and have failed—my poor Valeria, what can you, what can I, do? We can only submit.'

'Never!' I cried. 'The greatest lawyers are mortal men; the greatest lawyers have made mistakes before now. You can't deny that.'

'Read the Trial.' For the third time he said those cruel words, and said no more.

In utter despair of moving him—-feeling keenly, bitterly (if I must own it), his merciless superiority to all that I had said to him in the honest fervor of my devotion and my love—I thought of Major Fitz-David as a last resort. In the disordered state of my mind at that moment, it made no difference to me that the Major had already tried to reason with him, and had failed. In the face of the facts I had a blind belief in the influence of his old friend, if his old friend could only be prevailed upon to support my view.

'Wait for me one moment,' I said. 'I want you to hear another opinion besides mine.'

I left him, and returned to the study. Major Fitz-David was not there. I knocked at the door of communication with the front room. It was opened instantly by the Major himself. The doctor had gone away. Benjamin still remained in the room.

'Will you come and speak to Eustace?' I began. 'If you will only say what I want you to say—'

Before I could add a word more I heard the house door opened and closed. Major Fitz-David and Benjamin heard it too. They looked at each other in silence.

I ran back, before the Major could stop me, to the room in which I had seen Eustace. It was empty. My husband had left the house.

CHAPTER XIII. THE MAN'S DECISION.

MY first impulse was the reckless impulse to follow Eustace—openly through the streets.

The Major and Benjamin both opposed this hasty resolution on my part. They appealed to my own sense of self-respect, without (so far as I remember it) producing the slightest effect on my mind. They were more successful when they entreated me next to be patient for my husband's sake. In mercy to Eustace, they begged me to wait half an hour. If he failed to return in that time, they pledged themselves to accompany me in search of him to the hotel.

In mercy to Eustace I consented to wait. What I suffered under the forced necessity for remaining passive at that crisis in my life no words of mine can tell. It will be better if I go on with my narrative.

Benjamin was the first to ask me what had passed between my husband and myself.

'You may speak freely, my dear,' he said. 'I know what has happened since you have been in Major Fitz-David's house. No one has told me about it; I found it out for myself. If you remember, I was struck by the name of 'Macallan,' when you first mentioned it to me at my cottage. I couldn't guess why at the time. I know why now.'

Hearing this, I told them both unreservedly what I had said to Eustace, and how he had received it. To my unspeakable disappointment, they both sided with my husband, treating my view of his position as a mere dream. They said it, as he had said it, 'You have not read the Trial.'

I was really enraged with them. 'The facts are enough for me,' I said. 'We know he is innocent. Why is his innocence not proved? It ought to be, it must be, it shall be! If the Trial tell me it can't be done, I refuse to believe the Trial. Where is the book, Major? Let me see for myself if his lawyers have left nothing for his wife to do. Did they love him as I love him? Give me the book!'

Major Fitz-David looked at Benjamin.

'It will only additionally shock and distress her if I give her the book,' he said. 'Don't you agree with me?'

I interposed before Benjamin could answer.

'If you refuse my request,' I said, 'you will oblige me, Major, to go to the nearest bookseller and tell him to buy the Trial for me. I am determined to read it.'

This time Benjamin sided with me.

'Nothing can make matters worse than they are, sir,' he said. 'If I may be permitted to advise, let her have her own way.'

The Major rose and took the book out of the Italian cabinet, to which he had consigned it for safe-keeping.

'My young friend tells me that she informed you of her regrettable outbreak of temper a few days since,' he said as he handed me the volume. 'I was not aware at the time what book she had in her hand when she so far forgot herself as to destroy the vase. When I left you in the study, I supposed the Report of the Trial to be in its customary place on the top shelf of the book-case, and I own I felt some curiosity to know whether you would think of examining that shelf. The broken vase—it is needless to conceal it from you now—was one of a pair presented to me by your husband and his first wife only a week before the poor woman's terrible death. I felt my first presentiment that you were on the brink of discovery when I found you looking at the fragments, and I fancy I betrayed to you that something of the sort was disturbing me. You looked as if you noticed it.'

'I did notice it, Major. And I too had a vague idea that I was on the way to discovery. Will you look at your watch? Have we waited half an hour yet?'

My impatience had misled me. The ordeal of the half-hour was not yet at an end.