“I am coming to that.” Mrs. Burnham bent forward in her earnestness. “How much reliance can I place on my husband’s active dislike for Captain René La Montagne and the charges he has brought against him?”
Hayden considered the question. “It is difficult to answer,” he admitted, “I do not know the grounds, if any, your husband has for hating—frankly, on the surface it amounts to that—” he added hastily—“for hating the Frenchman.”
Mrs. Burnham colored painfully. “As I understand it, Captain La Montagne was a passive witness of an unfortunate scene in a club in Paris in which my husband did not—did not”—she faltered——“did not cover himself with glory; but I must say, in justice to him, that he was brought up in the tenets of the Quakers and dueling or fighting of any kind is——”
“I know,” broke in Hayden kindly. “It is highly probable that Burnham has become possessed of this notion, this dislike of La Montagne, contradictory alike to common-sense and his own experience, until it has developed into almost a monomania with him.”
Mrs. Burnham drew a long, long breath. “Then do you think he has brooded over a long past incident and centered his resentment on La Montagne until it has become an obsession?” she asked.
“Yes; so it seems to me.”
“Then you think he has taken the—the—shall we call it chance——” Mrs. Burnham whitened—“the chance of that unidentified man having been killed in our empty house, to involve Captain La Montagne in the crime so as to punish him for an imaginary grievance,—in his mental condition,—exaggerated out of all proportion to its real significance?”
“It may be,” Hayden hesitated, “but you must recollect that circumstantial evidence also points to Captain La Montagne.”
“I do not place much confidence in circumstantial evidence,” declared Mrs. Burnham. “Captain La Montagne if innocent, should have little difficulty in proving it, but——” Mrs. Burnham cleared her voice of a slight huskiness—“but I am willing to swear in any court that my husband’s attitude toward him is due to mental irresponsibility.”
A spark of admiration kindled Hayden’s eyes as he gazed at the composed woman seated before him; in his creed loyalty ranked high.