"Have you no desire to see Eleanor--to kiss her--to clasp her to your heart?"
"Do not ask me!" he said, with a sudden shrillness in his voice. Then, in a moment, he broke down utterly, and began to cry in a helpless, broken-hearted way that was painful to see.
Miss Bellamy went round to him and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.
"Oh, Ambrose, forgive me!" she said, with tears in her eyes. "I did not think to hurt your feelings. I cannot tell you how sorry I am."
"It is I who am so foolishly weak," he said; "but I shall be better in a minute or two." He held out one of his hands. Miss Bellamy pressed it affectionately between both hers, and then went softly back to her seat. For a little while no one spoke.
Ambrose Murray was the first to break the silence. "Upwards of twenty years have gone by," he said, "since Paul Stilling was murdered one night at the Pelican Hotel, Tewkesbury, and the prospect of my being able to prove my innocence after such a lapse of time would to most people appear an utterly hopeless one; and even to me, in my most sanguine moments, the chances of success seem very faint and far away indeed. Still, it is for this hope alone that I now live."
"Has any fresh evidence been discovered since the trial?" asked Miss Bellamy; "anything tending to exculpate you and fix the crime on the real murderer?"
"So far as I know, nothing has been discovered. The case virtually came to an end with my condemnation. The world believed me to be guilty--no one cared to sift further into the matter, and I was left to my fate."
"We none of us believed you to be guilty," said Miss Bellamy, with much earnestness. "But the evidence was so terribly against you, and events followed each other so quickly, and we poor women were all so bewildered and heart-broken, that--that we felt as if we could do nothing."
"As you say, Maria--you could do nothing; and I have never wronged any of those who were my friends at that sad time by thinking that more could have been done for me than was done. What was wanted was time, and that the law would not grant: time, and a man of strong will and clear brain, and then, perhaps, the mystery might have been fathomed."