How could they
put you down to sit in the hall? You must come in and have some
breakfast with us; Lady Corbet will be delighted, I'm sure." His sense
of the awkwardness of the meeting with the woman who was once to have
been his wife, and of the probable introduction which was to follow to
the woman who was his actual wife grew upon him, and made him speak a
little hurriedly. Ellinor's next words were a wonderful relief; and her
soft gentle way of speaking was like the touch of a cooling balsam.

"Thank you, you must excuse me. I am come strictly on business,
otherwise I should never have thought of calling on you at such an hour.
It is about poor Dixon."

"Ah! I thought as much!" said the judge, handing her a chair, and
sitting down himself. He tried to compose his mind to business, but in
spite of his strength of character, and his present efforts, the
remembrance of old times would come back at the sound of her voice. He
wondered if he was as much changed in appearance as she struck him as
being in that first look of recognition; after that first glance he
rather avoided meeting her eyes.

"I knew how much you would feel it. Some one at Hellingford told me you
were abroad, in Rome, I think. But you must not distress yourself
unnecessarily; the sentence is sure to be commuted to transportation, or
something equivalent. I was talking to the Home Secretary about it only
last night. Lapse of time and subsequent good character quite preclude
any idea of capital punishment." All the time that he said this he had
other thoughts at the back of his mind--some curiosity, a little regret,
a touch of remorse, a wonder how the meeting (which, of course, would
have to be some time) between Lady Corbet and Ellinor would go off; but
he spoke clearly enough on the subject in hand, and no outward mark of
distraction from it appeared.

Elmer answered:

"I came to tell you, what I suppose may be told to any judge, in
confidence and full reliance on his secrecy, that Abraham Dixon was not
the murderer." She stopped short, and choked a little.

The judge looked sharply at her.

"Then you know who was?" said he.

"Yes," she replied, with a low, steady voice, looking him full in the
face, with sad, solemn eyes.

The truth flashed into his mind. He shaded his face, and did not speak
for a minute or two. Then he said, not looking up, a little hoarsely,
"This, then, was the shame you told me of long ago?"

"Yes," sa