ake 'em believe it. These people never believe anything; the police
never do."

She gazed at him thoughtfully, with eyes compassionate and full of
tenderness. They were a balm to his unhappy spirit.

The hardness slowly vanished from his face. It became merely troubled. He
walked quickly across the room, dropped into the seat beside her and put
an arm round her.

"You're a damned sight too good for me, Lizzie," he said in a gentler
voice than she had ever heard him use before, and he kissed her.

"Poor Jim!" she said. And again: "Poor Jim!"

He trembled, breathing quickly, and held her tight.

After a while he regained control of himself, and sat upright. But he
still held her tightly to him with his right arm.

They began to discuss his plight and how he might best defend himself.
She was fully as fearful as he. But she did not show it. She must cheer
him up, and she kept insisting that the police could not fix the murder
on him, that they had nothing to go upon. If they had, they would have
already arrested him. Certainly they knew what the servants and the
village people were saying. But that was just talk. There wasn't any
evidence; there couldn't be any evidence.

Her support and encouragement put a new spirit into him. He had been so
alone against the world. His own family, though they had loudly and
fiercely protested his innocence to their friends and enemies in the
village, had not expressed this faith in him to him.

Indeed, his father had expressed their real belief, when he said to him
gloomily: "I always told you that damned temper of yours would get you
into trouble, Jim."

Then Elizabeth gave him his tea. After it they talked calmly with an
actual approach to cheerfulness till it was time for her to return to the
Castle to dress Olivia's hair for dinner. Then she would have it that he
should escort her back to the Castle. She declared, truly enough, that he
was doing himself no good by moping at the cottage, that people would say
that he dare not show himself. He _must_ hold his head up.

She insisted also that they should take the long way round, through the
village; that people should see them together. She insisted that he
should look cheerful, and talk to her all the length of the village
street. The looking cheerful helped to lighten his spirit yet more. As
they went through the village she kept looking up at him in an
affectionate fashion and smiling.

The village was, indeed, taken ab