his final committal. No
detail of these reports had escaped her notice, and now, after her talk
with her father, she again set herself to consider the whole question,
determined, at whatever hazards, to save her lover.

Finally her mind fastened upon two or three thoughts, and these
thoughts became the centre around which everything revolved. To begin
with, Ned Wilson was murdered. Next, Paul Stepaside, who was being
tried for that murder, was guiltless of it; that also was a settled
conviction in her mind. Who, then, was guilty? Someone must have done
the deed, but who? In whatever light murder could be considered, it
was something ghastly beyond words. The person who had driven Paul's
knife into the murdered man's heart must have had a terrible motive.
What could that motive have been? Who would be likely to do it? Who
had a motive sufficiently strong to commit such a crime? She thought
of one person after another, realising all the time that her imaginings
were vain. Yet she knew that it was in this direction that the truth,
if it were to be discovered, must be found.

She went over the whole story of the knife, and remembered the deadly
words which the counsel for the prosecution had uttered about it. The
knife was known to belong to Paul. It was lying in his office, an
office which he always locked when he left it. She remembered that
Paul's partner had sworn that he knew of no one who would be likely to,
or, indeed, could, enter the office and take it away without Paul's
knowledge and consent. And yet someone must have done so, for she was
still certain that Paul had never done the deed.

Presently she began to think of the question from another standpoint.
She had told Paul that he was trying to shield someone. She did not
attach much importance to it at the time, but now its consequence
became very real. If her surmise were true, then Paul would rather
suffer death himself than tell what he knew. She had pleaded with him,
only as a woman moved by a great love could plead. With her arms round
his neck and her eyes fastened on his she had besought him to tell the
truth, and he had been silent. Only the strongest of all reasons could
have kept him silent.

Her heart gave a great leap. With that swift intuition of which only a
woman is capable her mind leapt to its conclusion. There was only one
person in the world besides herself whom Paul loved dearly, and that
was his mother.

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