"Elizabeth, Elizabeth, what do you mean?"
"Because I wished it, you know," Elizabeth went on to explain quite calmly. "I was married to him, and I wished that he might die, so that no one would ever know it, I didn't tell any one but Julian—I wouldn't have told him if I could have helped it. That was the reason he gave me up—because I told him that I had been secretly married all the time. He was angry because I hadn't told him before."
"But," interrupted Mrs. Bobby, with intense anxiety, "you did tell him, at last?"
"Yes, of course I told him," said Elizabeth, in surprise. "I told him New Year's Eve. Why else should he have given me up?"
"Then," cried Mrs. Bobby, rising to her feet in her excitement, "that seems to me an unanswerable argument. If you had—had expected Paul Halleck's death, you certainly wouldn't have told Julian Gerard of your marriage. That's clear as daylight. Oh, Elizabeth, how fortunate that you told him!"
"Fortunate?" said Elizabeth, listlessly. "I don't see that it is very fortunate, since he has given me up and will never forgive me."
"But it may save you." Elizabeth looked at her blankly. "Oh, my dear child," cried Mrs. Bobby, "don't you understand that they suspect you of—of the murder?"
"You don't mean that they would put me in prison?"
Mrs. Bobby only answered by her silence. Elizabeth sat staring at her for a moment, then the color rushed into her white face, her eyes flashed. "How would they dare do that," she cried, "when I am innocent?"
"Of course you are," said Mrs. Bobby. "No one but a fool would think otherwise. And we will prove it, never fear. But you mustn't talk any more of this morbid nonsense about being guilty of his death and all that. I know what you mean well enough, but the general public doesn't understand such psychological subtleties. And besides, it's not true. The guilty person had no thought of doing you a service—be sure of that. Paul Halleck would have died, my dear, if you had never known him. And now keep up a brave heart, Elizabeth. Your friends will stand by you, and when all this is over—happily over, you will look back upon it as a bad dream—nothing more."