So the great Q.C. determined to take up Cyril Waring’s case as a labour of love, and didn’t doubt he would succeed in finally proving it.
CHAPTER XXIX. — WOMAN’S INTUITION
Next morning, Cyril Waring appeared once more in the Sessions House for the preliminary investigation on the charge of murder. As he entered, a momentary hush pervaded the room; then, suddenly, from a seat beneath, a woman’s voice burst forth, quite low, yet loud enough to be heard by all the magistrates on the bench.
“Why, mother,” it said, in a very tremulous tone, “it isn’t Guy himself at all; don’t you see it’s Cyril?”
The words were so involuntarily spoken, and in such hushed awe and amaze, that even the magistrates themselves, hard Devonshire squires, didn’t turn their heads to rebuke the speaker. As for Cyril, he had no need to look towards a blushing face in the body of the court to know that the voice was Elma Clifford’s.
She sat there looking lovelier than he had ever before seen her. Cyril’s glance caught hers. They didn’t need to speak. He saw at once in her eye that Elma at least knew instinctively he was innocent.
Next moment Gilbert Gildersleeve stood up to state his defence, and gazed at her steadily. As he rose in his place, Elma’s eye met his. Gilbert Gildersleeve’s fell. He didn’t know why, but in that second of time the great blustering man felt certain in his heart that Elma Clifford suspected him.
Elma Clifford, for her part, knew still more than that. With the swift intuition she inherited from her long line of Oriental ancestry, she said to herself at once, in categorical terms, “It was that man that did it. I know it was he. And he sees I know it. And he knows I’m right. And he’s afraid of me accordingly.” But an intuition, however valuable to its possessor, is not yet admitted as evidence in English courts. Elma also knew it was no use in the world for her to get up in her place and say so openly.