"When you found out that you were mistaken in her identity and that she had nothing whatever to do with the tragedy you would naturally transfer the opinion you had held of her to—to the other woman—the one who was actually there?"
The question was put searchingly and was not to be evaded.
"That would be a natural consequence," Gifford admitted frankly. "But there was in my mind always a growing doubt whether the wound had not been given accidentally. And that doubt became almost certainty when the real identity of Henshaw's victim became apparent."
Edith Morriston looked at him steadily. "You know it—for certain?" she asked almost coldly.
"Naturally I cannot fail to know it now," he answered sympathetically.
She gave a rather bitter laugh. "I shall not deny it to you, Mr. Gifford, even if I thought it could be of any use. But, knowing so much, you owe it to me to hear my explanation of matters which look so black against me, and above all to accept my absolute assurance that so far as I am concerned Clement Henshaw's wound was quite accidental. Indeed I never dreamt that he had been hurt until his body was found."
Gifford seized her hand by an irresistible impulse.
"Miss Morriston, if you only knew how glad and relieved I am to hear you say that!" he exclaimed.
"When you hear my story," she said, composedly but with an underlying bitterness which was hardly to be concealed, "the story of a long martyrdom of persecution—for it has been nothing less—you will acquit me of being guilty of anything disreputable. What I did was innocent enough and it moreover was forced upon me."
"Tell me," he urged tenderly.