m the book
of Bothwell. But in all his investigations at the time, in all his
broodings on the matter afterwards, he had been able to discover nothing
that could prompt Marlowe to such a deed--nothing but that temptation,
the whole strength of which he could not know, but which if it had
existed must have pressed urgently upon a bold spirit in which scruple
had been somehow paralysed. If he could trust his senses at all, the
young man was neither insane nor by nature evil. But that could not
clear him. Murder for a woman's sake, he thought, was not a rare crime,
Heaven knew! If the modern feebleness of impulse in the comfortable
classes, and their respect for the modern apparatus of detection, had
made it rare among them, it was yet far from impossible. It only needed
a man of equal daring and intelligence, his soul drugged with the
vapours of an intoxicating intrigue, to plan and perform such a deed.

A thousand times, with a heart full of anguish, he had sought to reason
away the dread that Mabel Manderson had known too much of what had been
intended against her husband's life. That she knew all the truth after
the thing was done he could not doubt; her unforgettable collapse in his
presence when the question about Marlowe was suddenly and bluntly put,
had swept away his last hope that there was no love between the pair,
and had seemed to him, moreover, to speak of dread of discovery. In any
case, she knew the truth after reading what he had left with her; and it
was certain that no public suspicion had been cast upon Marlowe since.
She had destroyed his manuscript, then, and taken him at his word to
keep the secret that threatened her lover's life.

But it was the monstrous thought that she might have known murder was
brewing, and guiltily kept silence, that haunted Trent's mind. She might
have suspected, have guessed something; was it conceivable that she was
aware of the whole plot, that she connived? He could never forget that
his first suspicion of Marlowe's motive in the crime had been roused by
the fact that his escape was made through the lady's room. At that time,
when he had not yet seen her, he had been ready enough to entertain the
idea of her equal guilt and her co-operation. He had figured to himself
some passionate hysterique, merciless as a cat in her hate and her love,
a zealous abettor, perhaps even the ruling spirit in the crime.

Then he had seen her, had spoken with her, had helped her in her
we