“There can’t be any hope, Gerry,” he said flatly, “if Faunce has told us the truth.”
Faunce smiled, but with a wince.
“It’s not a thing about which any man would want to jest,” he replied slowly, purposely misunderstanding Herford’s speech. “We believed him dead. If a miracle has happened, the body must have been recovered and resuscitated. I can’t believe a word of this!”
Herford, however, pursued his questions, the lawyer in him roused to ignore his new position as a father-in-law.
“Then you admit that his body might have been found?”
Faunce hesitated.
The others—his father-in-law, Gerry, who knew the truth, Dr. Price, and the wedding-guests—all waited. The moment before he had been the hero of the occasion, the bridegroom at his own wedding. Now, strangely enough, he stood alone in the center of the room facing them, much as a prisoner might stand at the bar.
He looked up and met Dr. Gerry’s eye, and it revealed the full force of the situation. Gerry believed that Overton lived!
Faunce experienced again the terrible sensation of the world falling to pieces around him while he still survived. If Overton lived, he was delivered from the hideous remorse that gnawed at his heart; but he was ruined. No power on earth could save him from public shame.
He rallied his forces again.