CHAPTER XV AUSTIN’S SILENCE
“I can’t understand it, Winnie. It seems almost as if every one—like mother—had already made up their minds that—that Roger——”
Grace broke off. She could not bring herself to utter the words “that Roger is guilty.” But Winnie understood.
“Nonsense, dear. There are you and I and George and your father and Austin on his side to begin with, and Mr. Spedding of course——”
“I don’t know about Mr. Spedding,” said Grace slowly, her hands clasped round her knees, her troubled eyes fixed on the fire. “I was with him all the afternoon, you know—there is so much to discuss and to arrange—and I thought his manner very reserved, very strange, and—and uneasy.”
“That’s only because he’s a lawyer. They’re always mysterious. What did he say?”
“Well, when I told him the simple truth as Roger told it me—as to why he followed Lady Rawson, and how it was he was so late at the church, he said, in quite an offhand way, that he knew all about that, and Roger would of course embody it in his statement at the proper time; but that his—Roger’s—unsupported account of his own movements was no use as evidence! You can’t think what a shock it gave me, Winnie; it was the way he said it. And then he explained that ‘fortunately the onus of proof rests with the prosecution, and not with the defence: it is for them to prove him guilty, not for us to prove him innocent.’ ‘Fortunately,’ mind you; and in tone that implied that it would be quite impossible to prove my darling’s innocence! Now what do you think of that?”
“That it was his silly, pompous old legal way of talking and nothing to be upset about,” said Winnie, with a fine assumption of confidence.
“Perhaps—but it hurt! He hopes to secure Cummings-Browne for the defence.”