"It was on the arm toward her, she declares. If she was in the observatory, it was your left side that she saw."
"Yes, yes; but the coat was over the other arm. I remember using my left hand in vaulting over the fence when I came up to the house."
"It is a vital point," said Mr. Gryce, with a quietness that concealed his real anxiety and chagrin. "If the coat was on the arm toward her, the fact of its being on the right——"
"Wait!" exclaimed Mr. Mansell, with an air of sudden relief. "I recollect now that I changed it from one arm to the other after I vaulted the fence. It was just at the moment I turned to come back to the side door, and, as she does not pretend to have seen me till after I left the door, of course the coat was, as she says, on my left arm."
"I thought you could explain it," returned Mr. Gryce, with an air of easy confidence. "But what do you mean when you say that you changed it at the moment you turned to come back to the side door? Didn't you go at once to the dining-room door from the swamp?"
"No. I had gone to the front door on my former visit, and was going to it this time; but when I got to the corner of the house I saw the tramp coming into the gate, and not wishing to encounter any one, turned round and came back to the dining-room door."
"I see. And it was then you heard——"
"What I heard," completed the prisoner, grimly.
"Mr. Mansell," said the other, "are you not sufficiently convinced by this time that Miss Dare was not with Mrs. Clemmens, but in the observatory of Professor Darling's house, to tell me what that was?"
"Answer me a question and I will reply. Can the entrance of the woods be seen from the position which she declares herself to have occupied?"