t until I stand before
him face to face."

"Ah! no dear!" she cried in quick alarm, starting up and flinging both
her arms about my neck. "No, don't do that?" she implored.

"Why not?"

"Because he will condemn me--he will think you have learned something
from me," she declared in deep distress.

"But I shall reveal to him my sources of information," I said. "Since
that fatal night I have learned that the man whom I believed was my firm
friend has betrayed me. An explanation is due to me, and I intend to have
one."

"At my expense--eh?" she asked in bitter reproach.

"No, dearest. The result shall not fall upon you," I said. "I will see to
that. A foul and dastardly crime has been committed, and the assassin
shall be brought to punishment."

My well-beloved shuddered in my arms as she heard my words--as though the
guilt were upon her.

I detected it, and became more than ever puzzled. Why did she seek to
secure this man's freedom?

I asked her that question point-blank, whereupon in a hard, faltering
voice, she replied:

"Because, dear, while he is still a fugitive from justice I feel myself
safe. The hour he is arrested is the hour of my doom."

"Why speak so despondently?" I asked. "Have I not promised to protect you
from those people?"

"How can you if they make allegations against me and bring up witnesses
who will commit perjury--who will swear anything in order that the guilt
shall be placed upon my head," she asked in despair.

"Though the justice often dispensed by country magistrates is a
disgraceful travesty of right and wrong, yet we still have in England
justice in the criminal courts," I said. "Rest assured that no jury will
convict an innocent woman of the crime of murder."

She stood slightly away from me, staring blankly straight before her.
Then suddenly she pressed both hands upon her brow and cried in a low,
intense voice:

"May God have pity on me!"

"Yes," I said very earnestly. "Trust in Him, dearest, and He will help
you."

"Ah!" she cried. "You don't know how I suffer--of all the terror--all the
dread that haunts me night and day. Each ring at the door I fear may be
the police--every man who passes the house I fear may be a detective
watching. This torture is too awful. I feel I shall go mad--_mad_!"

And she paced the room in her despair, while I stood watching her, unable
to still the wild, frantic terror that had gripped her young heart.

What could I do? What could I