me and stood beside her. "Whatever he may have
done, you are not affected by it. Appearances cannot well be blacker
against him than they are at present, but you must still remember you
are not responsible for his ill-deeds. No one here, least of all myself,
blames you. Besides, he has not yet been convicted."

"Not after that letter? There can be no doubt after that. He must have
had it with him when he was at Taloona, and dropped it."

"But it was opened, torn open, when the trooper found it. If Eustace had
dropped it, surely it would have been sealed up."

She glanced at him quickly.

"Do you still suspect me?" she exclaimed.

"I should not be here if I did," he answered quietly.

"Oh, I don't know what to think," she said. "I would rather you had come
to tell me he was dead than to show me that hideous thing. Better if he
were dead, far, far better, than that he should live to end his days on
the gallows or in gaol."

She was voicing his own thought, a thought which had been with him for
many days.

"It was because something of this kind might happen I wanted you to go
away," he said.

"I know. I understand that. But I told you--told you why I could not
go."

She spoke scarcely above a whisper, with her head bent over her clasped
hands as though she feared he might see her face.

"But the reason you gave no longer exists. Will you go now? Will you go
and leave all this wretched strain and worry behind you?"

"I dare not. It would drive me to perdition. You don't know how a woman
thinks. So long as she has someone near her whom she knows has respect
for her, she will fight against the temptation to drown all her sorrows
in one reckless plunge. When that one is no longer near her, no longer
her stronghold, then--what has she to live for?"

"You have the respect of all who know you."

She pressed her clasped hands to her lips to stop their quivering.

"No, Fred, no. I must stay. I could not bear to go. A man can think for
the future; a woman lives only in the present. You, a man, cannot
understand that. You would say I should go away, and in a few months or
a year or so everything would have blown over. That would be all right
for a man, but not for a woman. It is while the affair is blowing over
that she is in the greatest danger. It is then she wants sustaining. She
is only conscious of the precipice at her feet. Left to herself she must
lean over, nearer and nearer to the edge until she falls.

"