t? Of Mr. Marlowe having
impersonated my husband that night, and having escaped by way of my
window, and built up an alibi. I have read your despatch again and
again, Mr. Trent, and I don't see that those things can be doubted."

Trent gazed at her with narrowed eyes. He said nothing to fill the brief
pause that followed. Mrs. Manderson smoothed her skirt with a
preoccupied air, as one collecting her ideas.

"I did not make any use of the facts found out by you," she slowly said
at last, "because it seemed to me very likely that they would be fatal
to Mr. Marlowe."

"I agree with you," Trent remarked in a colorless tone.

"And," pursued Mrs. Manderson, looking up at him with a mild
reasonableness in her eyes, "as I knew that he was innocent I was not
going to expose him to that risk."

There was another little pause. Trent rubbed his chin, with an
affectation of turning over the idea. Inwardly he was telling himself,
somewhat feebly, that this was very right and proper; that it was quite
feminine, and that he liked her to be feminine. It was permitted to
her--more than permitted--to set her loyal belief in the character of a
friend above the clearest demonstrations of the intellect. Nevertheless,
it chafed him. He would have had her declaration of faith a little less
positive in form. It was too irrational to say she "knew." In fact (he
put it to himself bluntly) it was quite unlike her. If to be
unreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a specially feminine
trait, and if Mrs. Manderson had it, she was accustomed to wrap it up
better than any woman he had known.

"You suggest," he said at length, "that Marlowe constructed an alibi for
himself, by means which only a desperate man would have attempted, to
clear himself of a crime he did not commit. Did he tell you he was
innocent?"

She uttered a little laugh of impatience. "So you think he has been
talking me round! No, that is not so. I am merely sure he did not do it.
Ah! I see you think that absurd. But see how unreasonable you are, Mr.
Trent! Just now you were explaining to me quite sincerely that it was
foolishness in you to have had a certain suspicion of me." Trent started
in his chair. She glanced at him, and went on: "Now I know a great deal
more about Mr. Marlowe than you know about me even now. I saw him
constantly for several years. I don't pretend to know all about him; but
I do know that he is incapable of a crime of bloodshed. The idea of