"Nor when you placed it in your dress to carry it downstairs?"
"I do not know anything about fire-arms. When I got downstairs I locked it away as quickly as I could."
"So you picked up a revolver which had just been fired, without noticing whether the barrel was hot or cold. Is that what you wish me to believe?"
"I picked it up by the handle. I seem to remember now that it was warm, but I cannot be sure. I hardly knew what I was doing at the time."
Her confusion was so evident that Merrington did not think it worth while to pursue the point.
"If your story is true, why have you not told it before?" he said. "If you are merely the unfortunate victim of circumstances that you claim to be, why did you not announce your innocence when I was questioning you at the moat-house on the day after the murder?"
The girl hesitated perceptibly before answering the question.
"Perhaps I might have done so but for your recognition of my mother," she said at length, in a low tone.
"I fail to see how that affected your own position."
"It seemed to me then that it did," she responded in a firmer tone. "I knew that my story sounded improbable, but after learning what you knew about my mother it seemed to me that you would be even less likely to believe me, so I thought the best thing I could do was to keep silence, and trust to the truth coming to light in some other way."