"

"It is just a chance," said Maurice, in a low voice. "If he knew that
_you_ were the wife of the man who was accused--perhaps something would
come of it."

"What do you mean?"

"Lady Alice, pray do not build too much on what I am going to say. If
Francis Trent and John Smith be the same, then my knowledge of John
Smith's previous condition leads me to think it quite possible that it
was Francis Trent who, in a fit of frenzy, committed the murder of which
your husband is suspected."

Lady Alice looked at him in silence. "I don't see exactly," she said,
"that I should be of much use."

"Nor I--exactly," said Maurice. "But I see a vague chance; and I ask
you--for your husband's sake--to try it."

"Ah, you know I cannot refuse that," she said quickly. And then she
arranged with him where they should meet on the following afternoon in
order to drive to the lodgings now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Francis
Trent. Whether this proceeding might not be stigmatized as "tampering
with witnesses," Maurice and Lady Alice neither knew nor cared. If
Maurice had a doubt, he stifled it by telling himself that they were not
going to visit the "witness," Mary Trent, but the sick man, John Smith,
in whom Lady Alice had been interested at the hospital. It was only as a
precaution that he took with him young Mr. Grierson, junior partner of
the firm of solicitors to whom Caspar's defence was entrusted. Young
Grierson was a friend as well as a lawyer, and it was always as well to
have a friend at hand. But really he hardly knew for what result he
hoped.

The rooms in which Maurice himself, at Ethel's instance, had located Mr.
and Mrs. Francis Trent were in Bernard Street. They were plain but
apparently clean and comfortable. Maurice said a word to the servant,
and unceremoniously put her aside, and walked straight into the room
where he knew that Francis Trent was lying.

A thin, spare woman, with a deadly pale face and black sunken eyes, rose
from a seat beside the bed as they entered. Lady Alice knew, as if by
instinct, that this was Mary Trent. She averted her eyes from the woman
who had falsely accused her husband: she could not bear to look at her.
But Mary Trent scarcely took her eyes off Lady Alice's face.

"Will you look here, Lady Alice, if you please?" said Maurice in his
most professional tone. She turned towards the bed, and saw--yes, it was
the face of the man whom she had known in the hospital: thinner,
yellower, more