“There is a witness in this building who can testify more clearly and definitely than Miss Fulton, that Arthur Cumberland, for all we have heard in seeming contradiction to the same, might have been on the golf-links at the time he swears to. That witness is myself.
“ELWOOD RANELAGH.”
The time which elapsed between my passing over this note and his receiving and reading it, was to me like the last few moments of a condemned criminal. How gladly would I have changed places with Arthur, and with what sensations of despair I saw flitting before me in my mind’s eye, the various visions of Carmel’s loveliness which had charmed me out of myself. But the die had been cast, and I was ready to meet the surprised lawyer’s look when his eye rose from the words I had written and settled steadily on my face. Next minute he was writing busily and in a second later I was reading these words:
“Do you absolutely wish to be recalled as a witness, and by the defence? M.”
My answer was brief:
“I do. Not to make a confession of crime. I have no such confession to make. But I know who drove that horse. R.”
I had sacrificed Carmel to my sense of right. Never had I loved her as I did at that moment.
XXVII
EXPECTANCY
I see your end,
’T is my undoing.
King Henry VIII.