"About her father. Did you believe him to be guilty or innocent?"
"I would stake my life on Ambrose Murray's innocence. No one who ever knew him would for a single moment believe in his guilt. He was one of the gentlest-hearted men I ever met. There was something almost feminine about him. His was, indeed, a most lovable disposition."
"What was he by profession?"
"A doctor. He had been staying at Malvern for the benefit of his health--he was always delicate--and was walking home by easy stages. He had got as far as Tewkesbury, and happened to be stopping there on that one particular night when Paul Stilling was murdered."
"Is he still alive?"
"He is. I saw him only a few months ago. In fact, I have been in the habit of visiting him at intervals ever since his wife's death. For many years he did not know me. But gradually--imperceptibly almost--his reason has come back to him, and he is now, and has been for the last five years, as sane as either you or I."
"Is there no prospect of his ever being released?"
"None whatever, I'm afraid. You see, the crime--assuming him for the moment to have been guilty of it--was committed before his insanity declared itself. It is not as though he had been a lunatic at the time of the murder."
"What a terrible fate! Does he know that his daughter is alive?"
"He knows everything. It is at his own wish that Eleanor has been kept in ignorance of her real parentage for so long a time; and, had Jacob Lloyd lived, the secret would not have been told her even now."