“Remove the prisoner,” said Lord Carfield in a low voice, and Faradeane followed the policemen from the dock.
A murmur of pent-up excitement rose from the crowded court, and several ladies who had grown pale and somewhat hysterical during the examination drew long and audible breaths of relief.
“That man is not guilty,” said one of them. “I am as certain of it as I am that I am sitting here. No man capable of shooting a defenceless woman could stand up and look as he did. If he were a bad man he would brazen it out, and he would show himself to be a hardened criminal; and if, on the other hand, he were only a weak man, who had yielded to a sudden temptation, he would, this morning, have been utterly cast down and overwhelmed with grief and remorse. Instead of presenting either appearance, he looks round like a man who—who is too noble to have committed the vulgar crime, and still too noble to despise us for suspecting him.”
Now, Mr. McAndrew was standing just beneath the lady who had delivered her opinion, by no means in a whisper, and he looked up at her, and smiled behind the hand which he passed over his mouth. And he was still smiling as, shouldering his way out of the court, he came upon Mr. Bartley Bradstone, who in a purposeless kind of fashion was standing and being generally pushed about, as he stared with a species of fascination at the dock in which Faradeane had just stood.
Mr. McAndrew touched his hat.
“Good-morning, sir; quite a crowd.”
“Y—es, yes,” replied Bartley Bradstone.
At that moment there came the tramp of drilled footsteps in the corridor in which they were standing, and a cry of “Make way there! Stand back!”
It was the prisoner being escorted to the closed fly which was to take him back to the prison.
Bartley Bradstone started, and took half a step forward, his eyes fixed on Faradeane’s face.