IN SUSPENSE.
It was Saturday. A week had passed since Rupert's arrest, since he had left the little rooms at Westminster and been driven to the police court. It all seemed to him like a vivid dream, in which he played a passive but unwilling part.
He had seen no one but the prison chaplain since that dreadful day at the Westminster Police Court. The long wait in a bare cell, the sudden hurrying through dark passages, the Court, with the hum of conversation suddenly stifled—and then he found himself standing in the dock and felt rather than saw that every eye was fixed on him.
He had pleaded "Not guilty," in a voice he scarcely recognised as his own. Shame covered him as with a cold mist. He was committed for trial, but bail was offered him, two sureties of £500 each. He had shaken his head as he gulped down the lump in his throat that prevented him speaking. Who would stand bail for him?
He began to realise that he had not a friend; many acquaintances—many pals, yes—but not one friend!
A tear dropped on the open book on his knees—"Barnaby Rudge"—that the chaplain had brought him. He had just finished chapter sixty-two, and the tale of Rudge's prison had strangely softened his troubles. But the uppermost thought in his mind was the woman he loved!
Ruby! Again he felt that icy grip at his heart. How often had he reasoned it all out and fought against the suspicion that at last had become a certainty.
Why had she not been to see him? Why had she sent no word, not even a message?
What a coward he had been. The pistol that he held to his own breast had really been pointed at her heart. She had committed this great crime to save him from a greater.
A crime of murder, for in taking his own life did he not end hers, too? And now it was up to him to play the man and pay the price of his own sins. He began to pace the narrow cell.