"Joy!"
The icy tone, the fierce surprise it expressed, started her at once to her feet.
"Yes," she murmured, "joy! Don't you see that if he thinks me guilty, he must be innocent? I am willing to perish and fall from the ranks of good men and honorable women to be sure of a fact like this!"
"Imogene, Imogene, would you drive me mad?"
She did not seem to hear.
"Craik, are you guiltless, then?" she was saying. "Is the past all a dream! Are we two nothing but victims of dread and awful circumstances? Oh, we will see; life is not ended yet!" And with a burst of hope that seemed to transfigure her into another woman, she turned toward the lawyer with the cry: "If he is innocent, he can be saved. Nothing that has been done by him or me can hurt him if this be so. God who watches over this crime has His eye on the guilty one. Though his sin be hidden under a mountain of deceit, it will yet come forth. Guilt like his cannot remain hidden."
"You did not think this when you faced the court this morning with perjury on your lips," came in slow, ironical tones from her companion.
"Heaven sometimes accepts a sacrifice," she returned. "But who will sacrifice himself for a man who could let the trial of one he knew to be innocent go on unhindered?"
"Who, indeed!" came in almost stifled tones from the lawyer's lips.
"If a stranger and not Craik Mansell slew Mrs. Clemmens," she went on, "and nothing but an incomprehensible train of coincidences unites him and me to this act of violence, then may God remember the words of the widow, and in His almighty power call down such a doom——"