e you made your famous speech, and I only know it by report.
You spoke, of course, as an advocate--but I have heard it said--that you
expressed your own personal belief. Wherever the case is discussed,
there are still--as you know--two opinions--one more merciful than the
other. If the line you took was not merely professional; if you
personally believed your own case; can you give me some of the
arguments--you were probably unable to state them all in court--that
convinced you? Let me have something wherewith to meet my mother. She
won't look at this altogether from the worldly point of view. She will
have a standard of her own. Merely to belittle the thing, as long past
and forgotten, won't help me. But if I _could_ awaken her pity!--if you
could give me the wherewithal--"

Sir James turned away. He walked to the window and stood there a minute,
his face invisible. When he returned, his pallor betrayed what his
steady and dignified composure would otherwise have concealed.

"I can tell you what Mrs. Sparling told me--in prison--with the accents
of a dying woman--what I believed then--what I believe now.--Moreover, I
have some comparatively recent confirmation of this belief.--But this is
too public!"--he looked round the library--"we might be disturbed. Come
to my room to-night. I shall go up early, on the plea of letters. I
always carry with me--certain documents. For her child's sake, I will
show them to you."

At the last words the voice of the speaker, rich in every tender and
tragic note, no less than in those of irony or invective, wavered for
the first time. He stooped abruptly, took up the book he had been
reading, and left the room.

Marsham, too, went up-stairs. As he passed along the main corridor to
his room, lost in perplexity and foreboding, he heard the sound of a
woman's dress, and, looking up, saw Alicia Drake coming toward him.

She started at sight of him, and under the bright electric light of the
passage he saw her redden.

"Well, Oliver!--you stayed a good while."

"Not so very long. I have been home nearly an hour. I hope the horses
went well!"

"Excellently. Do you know where Sir James is?"

It seemed to him the question was significantly asked. He gave it a cold
answer.

"Not at this moment. He was in the smoking-room a little while ago."

He passed her abruptly. Alicia Drake pursued her way to the hall. She
was carrying some letters to the post-box near the front door. When she