to suggest something to you--to
convince you--as I have known these people so well--and it is very
important to have your signatures."

How crude it sounded--how mechanical! She felt that she had not yet
command of herself. The strange place, the stately room, the
consciousness of Aldous behind her--Aldous, who should have been on her
side and was not--all combined to intimidate her.

Lord Maxwell's concern was evident. In the first place, he was
painfully, unexpectedly struck by the change in the speaker. Why, what
had Aldous been about? So thin! so frail and willowy in her black
dress--monstrous!

"My dear," he said, walking up to her and laying a fatherly hand on her
shoulder, "my dear, I wish I could make you understand how gladly I
would do this, or anything else, for you, if I honourably could. I would
do it for your sake and for your grandfather's sake. But--this is a
matter of conscience, of public duty, both for Aldous and myself. You
will not surely _wish_ even, that we should be governed in our relations
to it by any private feeling or motive?"

"No, but I have had no opportunity of speaking to you about it--and I
take such a different view from Aldous. He knows--everybody must
know--that there is another side, another possible view from that which
the judge took. You weren't in court to-day, were you, at all?"

"No. But I read all the evidence before the magistrates with great care,
and I have just talked over the crucial points with Aldous, who followed
everything to-day, as you know, and seems to have taken special note of
Mr. Wharton's speeches."

"Aldous!"--her voice broke irrepressibly into another note--"I thought
he would have let me speak to you first!--to-night!"

Lord Maxwell, looking quickly at his grandson, was very sorry for him.
Aldous bent over her chair.

"You remember," he said, "you sent down the petition. I thought that
meant that we were to read and discuss it. I am very sorry."

She tried to command herself, pressing her hand to her brow. But already
she felt the irrevocable, and anger and despair were rising.

"The whole point lies in this," she said, looking up: "_Can_ we believe
Hurd's own story? There is no evidence to corroborate it. I grant
that--the judge did not believe it--and there is the evidence of hatred.
But is it not possible and conceivable all the same? He says that he did
not go out with any thought whatever of killing Westall, but that when
Westall came up