shall see the sunlight again together,' replied Rolfe, with forced
cheerfulness.

'You think so? I wish I could believe it.'

In less than half an hour Harvey was back at the station, waiting for
his train. He suffered pangs of self-rebuke; it seemed to him that he
ought to have found some better way, in word or deed, for manifesting
the sympathy of true friendship. He had betrayed a doubt which must for
ever affect Hugh's feeling towards him. But this was his lot in life,
to blunder amid trying circumstances, to prove unequal to every grave
call upon him. He tried vainly to see what else he could have done, yet
felt that another man would have faced the situation to better purpose.
One resolve, at all events, he had brought out of it: Hugh Carnaby's
reference to Alma declared the common-sense view of a difficulty which
ought to be no difficulty at all, and put an end to vacillation. But in
return for this friendly service he had rendered nothing, save a few
half-hearted words of encouragement. Rolfe saw himself in a mean,
dispiriting light.

On the next day Mrs. Frothingham arrived at Pinner, and Harvey's
anxieties were lightened. The good, capable woman never showed to such
advantage as in a sick-room; scarcely had she entered the house when
Alma's state began to improve. They remarked that Alma showed no great
concern on Sibyl's account, but was seemingly preoccupied with thought
of Carnaby himself. This being the case, it was with solicitude that
Harvey and Mrs. Frothingham awaited the result of Hugh's trial for
manslaughter. Redgrave's housekeeper could not be found; the
self-accused man stood or fell by his own testimony; nothing was
submitted to the court beyond the fact of Redgrave's death, and Hugh
Carnaby's explanation of how it came about. Nothing of direct evidence;
indirect, in the shape of witness to character, was abundantly
forthcoming, and from 'people of importance. But the victim also was a
person of importance, and justice no doubt felt that, under whatever
provocation, such a man must not be slain with impunity. It sentenced
the homicide to a term of two years' imprisonment, without hard labour.

Alma heard the sentence with little emotion. Soon after she fell into a
deeper and more refreshing sleep than any she had known since her
illness began.

'It is the end of suspense,' said Mrs. Frothingham.

'No doubt,' Harvey assented.

A few days more and Mrs. Frothingham took Alma away into Hampsh