sumed in her former indifferent tone:

"You see, my husband, although he refuses to believe in my innocence,
has handed over this house to me; and under my marriage settlement I
have quite a large income----"

He interrupted her abruptly--

"Mrs. Carstairs, forgive me--did you say your husband refused to believe
you innocent?"

"Yes. My husband--like the majority of the world--believes me guilty,"
said Chloe Carstairs.

CHAPTER III

The story he had heard on the occasion of his second visit to Cherry
Orchard haunted Anstice for days. There was something so incongruous in
the notion of this woman having served a sentence of imprisonment for an
offence which, of all others, might well be supposed the most impossible
for any decent person to commit; yet Anstice knew instinctively that
Mrs. Carstairs had spoken the truth; and although for the last few years
he had been far too much occupied with his own private grudge against
Fate to spare any pity for the woes of others, he did feel a surprising
sympathy for the young and apparently lonely woman whom the world had
treated so cruelly.

That she was innocent of the crime with which she was charged, Anstice
never doubted. Since the catastrophe which had altered his whole outlook
on life, he had been inclined to be cynical regarding the good faith of
mankind in general; but Mrs. Carstairs' manner had carried conviction by
its very lack of emphasis. She had not protested her innocence--indeed,
he could barely remember in what words she had given him to understand
that she was not guilty of the loathsome deed; yet her very quietness,
the very indifference of her manner as she told her story carried more
weight than an avalanche of protestation would have done.

As a medical man Anstice was something of a student of physiognomy; and
although Mrs. Carstairs' face was not one to be easily read, the shape
of her brow and the classical outline of her features seemed to Anstice
to preclude any possibility of the morbid and degenerate taint which
must have inspired the communications of whose authorship she had been
accused.

The very fact that she did not appear to care whether or no he believed
in her strengthened Anstice's belief that she was an innocent and
much-wronged woman; and in his mind he linked her with himself as one of
the victims of an unfavourable and ruthless destiny.

After attending her for a week Anstice declared her to be in no further
need of