"There is nothing she can have on her mind," Hesba Powlett replied. "You know we had trouble with her about that good-for-nothing George Forester?" The doctor nodded. It was pretty well known throughout the village how matters stood.
"She gave him up weeks and weeks ago, just at the time he went away, when he was wanted for the share he had in that poaching business up in the Carne Woods. She told her father that she saw we had been right, and would have nothing more to say to him. That was a week or more before she had that fall on the hill, and I have never heard her mention his name since. I feel sure that she is not fretting about him. Ruth has always been a sensible girl, and once she has made up her mind she wasn't likely to turn back again."
"No, I should not say that she was fretting on his account, Mrs. Powlett. Fretting in young women shows itself in lowness of spirits and general depression and want of tone. In her case it appears to me to be rather some sort of anxiety, though about what I cannot guess. If it had been any other girl in the village, I should have had my suspicion that she had taken a fancy in some way to Ronald Mervyn, and was anxious about the trial; but of course that is out of the question in Ruth's case. No doubt she is anxious about the trial, and has a nervous dread of being obliged to stand up and describe the scene again in a crowded court, and perhaps be questioned and cross-questioned. It's a trying thing for any one; still more so, of course, for a girl whose nerves have been shattered, and who is in a weak and debilitated state of health. Well, I shall be heartily glad when it's all over, and we settle down into our ordinary ways."
"What do you think will be the verdict, sir? Do you think they will find Captain Mervyn guilty?"
"I do not like to give an opinion, Mrs. Powlett. It depends so much on the jury, and on the way the counsel and judge put it, but I hardly think that the evidence is sufficient to hang a man. There are, of course, grave grounds for suspicion, but I should doubt whether any jury would find Mervyn guilty upon them. It would be amply sufficient if it were merely a case of robbery, but men don't like to find a verdict when there is a possibility of their finding out too late to save a man's life that they have been mistaken. At any rate, Mrs. Powlett, do your best to keep Ruth's thoughts from dwelling on the subject. I wish it was summer weather, and that she could sit out in the garden. Of course she is not strong enough to be able to walk, except for a hundred yards or so, but I would get her to take a little turn, if it's only once round the garden now and then."
"I don't think she would walk if she could, sir. When I was speaking the other day about her getting well enough to go out for walks, she turned white and shivered, and said she didn't want to go outside the door again, not for ever so long. That fall she got seems to have changed her altogether."
"Well, well, we must get her away, as I said, Mrs. Powlett. She wants more bracing air than you have got here, and to have the wind either coming straight off the sea or else to be in some hilly, breezy place."
"I am sure I don't know how it's to be managed. She can't go by herself, and I don't see how I am to leave Hiram."
"You will have to leave Hiram for a day or two, and take her wherever we fix upon as the best place and settle her there. Hiram will get on very well without you for a day or two. She is no more fit to travel alone than a baby. However, I must be off. Keep up her spirits as well as you can, and don't let her brood over this business."
At last the day when Ronald Mervyn was to be tried for murder arrived. The Assizes were at Exeter, and never in the memory of man had there been such numerous applications to the sheriff and other officials for seats in the court. The interest in the case had extended far beyond the limits of Devonshire. The rank in life of the victim and the accused, the cold-blooded nature of the murder, and the nature of the evidence rendered the affair a cause célèbre, and the pros and cons of the case were discussed far and wide.