"You would even wish me to assist you in providing a safe retreat for her."
"Exactly."
"Well, my lord, that is just what I cannot do. It is my duty, as I conceive it, to hold my tongue, but I should not feel justified in aiding her Ladyship to escape the consequences of her—her—action. In order to be faithful to my engagement to you, I am willing to let the public believe that I have made a failure of the case. I shall not even allow my imagination to dwell on your future movements, but more than that I cannot do."
"You take the position that her Ladyship is an ordinary criminal, but you must realise that that is absurd. Even granting that she is responsible for her husband's death—of which, by the way, we have no absolute proof—are you not able to make allowances for a poor woman goaded to desperation by an opium fiend?"
"I do not constitute myself her Ladyship's judge, but I don't think your Lordship quite realises all that you are asking of me. Even if I were willing to waive the question of my professional honour, I should still decline to undertake a task which, I know, is foredoomed to failure. For, if I discovered Lady Wilmersley with so little difficulty, Scotland Yard is bound to do so before long. The trail is too unmistakable. It is impossible—absolutely impossible, I assure you, that the secret can be kept."
Cyril moved uneasily.
"I wish I could convince your Lordship of this and induce you to allow the law to take its course. Her Ladyship ought to come forward at once and plead justifiable homicide. If she waits till she is arrested, it will tell heavily against her."
"But she is ill, really ill," insisted Cyril. "Dr. Stuart-Smith tells me that if she is not kept perfectly quiet for the next few weeks, her nervous system may never recover from the shock."
"H'm! That certainly complicates the situation; on the other hand, you must remember that discovery is not only inevitable but imminent, and that the police will not stop to consider her Ladyship's nervous system. No, my lord, the only thing for you to do is to break the news to her yourself and to persuade her to give herself up. If you don't, you will both live to regret it."
"That may be so," replied Cyril after a minute's hesitation, "but in this matter I must judge for myself. I still hope that you are wrong and that either the young woman in question is not Lady Wilmersley or that it was not her Ladyship who killed my cousin, and I refuse to jeopardise her life till I am sure that there is no possibility of your having made a mistake. But don't throw up the case yet. So far you have only sought for evidence which would strengthen your theory of her Ladyship's guilt, now I want you to look at the case from a fresh point of view. I want you to start all over again and to work on the assumption that her Ladyship did not fire the shot. I cannot accept your conclusion as final till we have exhausted every other possibility. These Frenchmen, for instance, have they or have they not a connection with the case? And then there is Valdriguez. Why have you never suspected her? At the inquest she acknowledged that no one had seen her leave her Ladyship's apartments and we have only her word for it that she spent the evening in her room."