r
feelings;--as probably may the reader also. But it was impossible
that he should allow her to leave him in her present state.

She sat down again, and leaning both her arms upon the table, hid
her face within her hands. He was now standing, and for the moment
did not speak to her. Indeed he could not bring himself to break the
silence, for he saw her tears, and could still hear the violence of
her sobs. And then she was the first to speak. "If it were not for
him," she said, raising her head, "I could bear it all. What will he
do? what will he do?"

"You mean," said Mr. Furnival, speaking very slowly, "if
the--verdict--should go against us."

"It will go against us," she said. "Will it not?--tell me the truth.
You are so clever, you must know. Tell me how it will go. Is there
anything I can do to save him?" And she took hold of his arm with
both her hands, and looked up eagerly--oh, with such terrible
eagerness!--into his face.

Would it not have been natural now that he should have asked her to
tell him the truth? And yet he did not dare to ask her. He thought
that he knew it. He felt sure,--almost sure, that he could look into
her very heart, and read there the whole of her secret. But still
there was a doubt,--enough of doubt to make him wish to ask the
question. Nevertheless he did not ask it.

"Mr. Furnival," she said; and as she spoke there was a hardness came
over the soft lines of her feminine face; a look of courage which
amounted almost to ferocity, a look which at the moment recalled
to his mind, as though it were but yesterday, the attitude and
countenance she had borne as she stood in the witness-box at that
other trial, now so many years since,--that attitude and countenance
which had impressed the whole court with so high an idea of her
courage. "Mr. Furnival, weak as I am, I could bear to die here on the
spot,--now--if I could only save him from this agony. It is not for
myself I suffer." And then the terrible idea occurred to him that she
might attempt to compass her escape by death. But he did not know
her. That would have been no escape for her son.

"And you too think that I must not marry him?" she said, putting up
her hands to her brows as though to collect her thoughts.

"No; certainly not, Lady Mason."

"No, no. It would be wrong. But, Mr. Furnival, I am so driven that I
know not how I should act. What if I should lose my mind?" And as she
looked at him there was that about her eyes