"I have felt the rope round my neck all night. Oh, it was terrible in the dark. It was terrible ... terrible——" and she felt about her pretty white neck with her trembling hands.
"Forget all about it now. I have made all the necessary arrangements. There will have to be an inquest. It will be held here—-"
"Here?" she shivered.
"At ten o'clock this morning. You are too ill to be present, so you will just lie still. It will not take long. And I have done everything else that had to be done."
"It is very good of you," she murmured, with a forlorn shake of the head.
She did not ask by what means he had saved her from the consequences of what she had done. Perhaps she dared not. Perhaps she believed he had, after all, forsworn himself for her sake, and refrained from questioning him lest it should only add to his discomfort. Anyway she was satisfied with the fact. She was not going to be hanged. That was enough.
Mollie came in with her deftly-compounded cup.
"Drink it up," said the Doctor. "I will look in again later on," and he went away to prepare the household for the coming meeting in the big dining-room.
IX
The sixteen jurymen, whom Wulfrey had summoned in order to make quite sure of a legal panel, came riding up in ones and twos, with faces tuned to the occasion, disguising, as well as they could, the vast curiosity this sudden call had excited in themselves and all their various households.