"I don't know that he has. Brooke Dalton's one of the finest fellows in existence: there's a heart in him somewhere, and he does not easily forget. I came upon him and Campion one day in the garden, and though they knew I was close to them they went on talking about her and her husband. 'You were always too hard on her, Sydney,' Brooke was saying, 'and now you have admitted as much.' 'I don't wish to be hard on her, but I can't bear that man,' Campion said—meaning Walcott, of course. 'Well,' Dalton said,' I am perfectly sure that she would not have stuck to him through thick and thin, so bravely and so purely, unless she had been convinced of his innocence. As I believe in her, I am bound to believe in him. Don't you think so?' he said, turning to me. 'I hope every one who knows her will show her the respect and reverence that she deserves. Now that they have come back to England, Edith is going to call on her at once.' Edith is his sister, you know: and she tells my mother that she called immediately."
"How did Campion take it?"
"Very well, indeed. He said, 'You were always a good fellow, Brooke, and I may have been mistaken.' New thing to hear Campion owning up, isn't it?"
"So the Walcotts have come back?" said Milton, with some excitement. "By Jove, I shall leave my card to-morrow. Of course, he was innocent. I knew all about it, for I defended him at the Old Bailey.—No wonder Campion is uncomfortable about it."
The idea seemed to divert Milton very much, and he chuckled over it for two or three minutes.
"From what my mother says," Willoughby continued, "people seem disposed to take them up. Her books, you know, are awfully popular—and didn't you see how well the papers spoke of his last poems? You mark my words—there will be a run upon the Walcotts by and by."
"Just the way of the world!" said Charles Milton. "Three or four years ago they would have lynched him. Poor devil! I remember when I was about the only man in London who refused to believe him guilty."
"One thing is plain enough," said Tom Willoughby. "He would have gone to the dogs long ago if it had not been for her. I have not come across many heroines in my time, though I have heard of plenty from other people; but I am bound to confess that I never heard of one who deserved the name better than Mrs. Walcott."
The world bestowed its free pardon upon Alan Walcott, and for the sake of her who had taught him to fight against despair and death he accepted graciously a gift which otherwise would have been useless to him. Inspired by her, he had built a new life upon the ruins of his past; and if, henceforth, he lived and labored for the world, it was only with the new motives and the new energy which she had implanted in him.