During those weary hours in Poland Street, when she was not dozing or faint with anxiety, she had often recalled Furneaux's queer way of conducting an inquiry. She knew little or nothing of police methods, yet she was sure that British detectives did not badger witnesses with denunciations of the suspected person. In newspaper reports, too, she had read of clever lawyers who defended those charged with the commission of a crime; why, then, was Osborne undefended; what had become of the solicitor who appeared in his behalf at the inquest? Unfortunately, she had no friend of ripe experience to whom she could appeal in London, but she determined, before that day closed, to seek those two, the solicitor and Furneaux, bidding the one protect Osborne's interests, and demanding of the other an explanation of his gross failure to safeguard her when she was actually carrying out his behests.
Mrs. Marsh, far more feeble and unstrung than her daughter, was greatly alarmed when Rosalind announced her intention.
"My dear one," she sobbed, "I shall lose you again. How can you dream of running fresh risk of meeting those terrible beings who have already wreaked their vengeance on you?"
"But, mother darling, you shall come with me—there are lives at stake——"
"Of what avail are two women against creatures like these Anarchists?"
"We shall go to Scotland Yard and obtain police protection. Failing that, we shall hire men armed with guns to act as our escort. Mother, I did not die in that den of misery, but I shall die now of impotent wrath if I remain here inactive and let Mr. Osborne lie in prison for my sake."
"For your sake? Rosalind? After what you have told me?"
"Oh, it is true, true! I feel it here," and an eager hand pressed close to her heart. "My brain says, 'You are foolish—why not believe your eyes, your ears?' but my heart bids me be up and doing, for the night cometh when no man can work, and I shall dream of death and the grave if I sleep this day without striking one blow for the man that loves me."
"Yet he said——"
"Bear with me, mother dear! I cannot explain, I can only feel. A woman's intuition may sometimes be trusted when logic points inexorably to the exact opposite of her beliefs. And this is a matter that calls for a woman's wit. See how inextricably women are tangled in the net which has caught Osborne in its meshes. A woman was killed, a woman found the poor thing's body, a woman gave the worst evidence against Osborne, a woman has sacrificed all womanliness to snatch him from me. Ah, where is Pauline Dessaulx? She, too, is mixed up in it. Has she discovered the loss of the daggers? Has she fled?"