"If I'm committed for trial," he said, when, instead of being discharged as he expected, he was remanded for a week, "I shall feel that I am half way to the gallows. These lawyers are the very devil, and I don't believe a saint would emerge from cross-examination with a rag of character left."
Mr. Tracy reassured him then, and Gwendolen cheered him up by her loving sympathy.
"Mother and I have seen Melville," she said, "and we will not leave a single thing undone to put an end to this horrible blunder with the enquiry before the magistrates. I can't believe that it will be possible to twist facts into evidence enough to justify your committal. It will be all right next time, and I shall insist upon being married to you by special licence directly you are discharged, as a sort of vote of confidence in you."
She would not allow him to guess how anxious she was, and spared him all knowledge of how strongly the tide of public opinion was running against him; but at the Manor House, when alone with her mother, she broke out into a storm of indignation against her neighbours.
"It shakes one's faith in human nature," she said passionately, "that anyone can be found to believe such a preposterous charge. Of course Ralph knew he would be Sir Geoffrey's heir, and to suggest that he would commit murder to antedate his possession by a few years is absurd. And then all this haggling about minutes! Of course any man would change his clothes before bothering to get himself a whiskey and soda. If there hadn't been such an awful storm, Ralph would not have discovered the murder at all; he would have gone straight up to The Grange without looking into Sir Geoffrey's room."
For it was upon the time spent by Ralph in the boathouse that the police were at present chiefly relying to substantiate the charge against him; they showed that the moment suggested by the doctor as that when the fatal shot took effect must have synchronised with Ralph's arrival in the boathouse, and there was absolutely no evidence to show that anyone else had been there at all. Mr. Tracy's suggestion that the murderer would scarcely be so foolish as to leave his blood-stained garments lying on the floor was heard politely, but not accepted as sufficient to warrant a discharge, and the request of the police for a remand, pending further investigation, was acceded to without dissent. So for another week they were obliged to possess their souls in patience.
But while upon Gwendolen Ralph's arrest had only the effect of increasing her love and developing her mental activity on his behalf, upon Lavender Sinclair its effect was very different.
When she reached home, after parting from Melville at Waterloo on the evening of the murder, she broke down physically. During the row from Fairbridge to St. Martin's Lock she contracted a bad chill, which compelled her to keep her bed. This, indeed, she was only too glad to do. In her darkened room she lay with her throbbing head buried in the pillows, as if to exclude from her sight the daylight that only served to remind her of the work going on in the world; it would be someone's work to trace the man who fired the shot, of which the sound still rang in her ears, and when he was found——. She fought against her illness, which was real enough. If she became delirious she might talk, and part of her penance for the future would be the guard that she must ever keep upon her tongue. She almost feared to sleep, lest an only partially unconscious brain should prompt her to babble of that which she had seen. Gently, but firmly, she insisted upon being left alone, and in her solitude she struggled to be well.
At first she kept aloof from all news of the world outside; would see no papers, and checked Lucille's inclination to chatter, but soon this mood was replaced by one of feverish desire to know what had happened at Fairbridge; at any rate, she must not be taken unawares, and every day's delay was a day's respite. In one of the weekly papers she read an account of the tragedy and of the inquest that followed, and derived some vague assurance from the frank admission of the police that they were absolutely without a clue.
This relaxed the tension of her nerves, and when the next morning dawned, she felt less ill and better able to resume her ordinary life. She drew up the blinds and threw open the window; presently she would go for a drive and let rapid motion through the fresh air banish the last traces of the headache that had tortured her since—then. If only she dared she would call at Jermyn Street, but her promise not to write to or call on Melville must be kept. If she had kept her former promise to remain in the boat how much agony she would have escaped!