"Sir James!--I know you thought there were excuses--almost justification--for what that poor creature did. I was a boy of fifteen at the time you made your famous speech, and I only know it by report. You spoke, of course, as an advocate--but I have heard it said--that you expressed your own personal belief. Wherever the case is discussed, there are still--as you know--two opinions--one more merciful than the other. If the line you took was not merely professional; if you personally believed your own case; can you give me some of the arguments--you were probably unable to state them all in court--that convinced you? Let me have something wherewith to meet my mother. She won't look at this altogether from the worldly point of view. She will have a standard of her own. Merely to belittle the thing, as long past and forgotten, won't help me. But if I could awaken her pity!--if you could give me the wherewithal--"
Sir James turned away. He walked to the window and stood there a minute, his face invisible. When he returned, his pallor betrayed what his steady and dignified composure would otherwise have concealed.
"I can tell you what Mrs. Sparling told me--in prison--with the accents of a dying woman--what I believed then--what I believe now.--Moreover, I have some comparatively recent confirmation of this belief.--But this is too public!"--he looked round the library--"we might be disturbed. Come to my room to-night. I shall go up early, on the plea of letters. I always carry with me--certain documents. For her child's sake, I will show them to you."
At the last words the voice of the speaker, rich in every tender and tragic note, no less than in those of irony or invective, wavered for the first time. He stooped abruptly, took up the book he had been reading, and left the room.
Marsham, too, went up-stairs. As he passed along the main corridor to his room, lost in perplexity and foreboding, he heard the sound of a woman's dress, and, looking up, saw Alicia Drake coming toward him.
She started at sight of him, and under the bright electric light of the passage he saw her redden.
"Well, Oliver!--you stayed a good while."
"Not so very long. I have been home nearly an hour. I hope the horses went well!"
"Excellently. Do you know where Sir James is?"
It seemed to him the question was significantly asked. He gave it a cold answer.