“Ah, well, I’m not going to die yet, and it would be very sad for my handsome little wife to be left a widow if they hang me, or to exist with a live husband serving one-and-twenty years in the bush.”
“Robert, you will break my heart if you speak like that,” panted Millicent.
“Ah, well, we must not do that,” he cried laughingly. “Look here, though; this barrister who is to defend me, I know him—Granton, Q.C. Did your father instruct him?”
“No: he could not. Robert, we are frightfully poor.”
“Ah! it is a nuisance,” he said, “thanks to my enemies; but we’ll get through. Now then, who has instructed this man?”
“I cannot tell, dear.”
“I see it all,” he said; “it’s a plan of the enemy. They employ their own man, and he will sell me, bound hand and foot, to the Philistines.”
“Oh! Robert, surely no one would be so base.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “They want to win. It’s Sir Gordon’s doing. No, it’s Christie Bayle. I’d lay a thousand pounds he has paid the fellow’s fees.”
“Then, Robert, you will not trust him; you will refuse to let him defend you. Husband, my brave, true, innocent husband,” she cried, with her pale face flushing, “defend yourself!”