"Well—if you please—Sir Nigel—that is—"
"What the devil are they, then?"
"Constable Roberts give orders that I was to stay 'ere with you—but I can turn me back," returned Bennett, with flushing countenance. "Shall I show the lady in?"
"Yes."
She came. Her frock was of some clinging gray material that made her look more fairy-like than ever. A drooping veil of gray gauze fell like a mist before her face, screening from him the anguished mirrors of her eyes.
"Nigel! My poor, poor Nigel!"
"Little 'Toinette!"
"Oh, Nigel—it seems impossible—utterly! That you should be thought to have killed Dacre. You of all people! Poor, peace-loving Nigel! Something must be done, dearest; something shall be done! You shall not suffer so, for someone else's sin—you shall not!"
He smiled at her wanly, and told her how beautiful she was. It was useless to explain to her the utter futility of it all. There was the revolver and there the bullet. The weapon was his—of the bullet he could say nothing. He had only told the truth—and they had not believed him.
"Yes see, dear," he said, patiently, "they do not believe me. They say I killed him, and Borkins—lying devil that he is—has told them a story of how the thing was done; sworn, in fact, that he saw it all from the kitchen window, saw Wynne lying in the garden path, dying, after I fired at him. Of course the thing's an outrageous lie, but—they're acting upon it."