I went home sadly. That Jenny should suffer the wreck and destruction of her house in Soho Square, was hard: that she should, also, which was much worse, be arrested on a capital charge and committed to Newgate: that she should have nothing to say or to plead in defence: in revenge for the part she had played in proving my innocence: these things, I say, were difficult to understand. Why should she not plead 'Not Guilty,' and leave it to the prosecution to prove that she was the owner of the property or that she knew it was in her house? Who would believe the word of the revengeful fury who swore to seeing the things taken to the house by the old woman and her daughter? Would not a clever counsel make her contradict herself? and confess, somehow, that she herself had laid the things there by way of a trap?

So I argued, blind, in my anxiety.

'Will,' said Alice, 'you would meet misfortune by falsehood. Fie! You would lay a trap set by a clever talker to catch this miserable ignorant woman. Fie!'

'What then?' I cried. 'Ignorant or not she is a mischievous and a revengeful woman. My dear, I would save Jenny at any cost.'

'I think Jenny is right, Will. She will meet the charge by simply pleading "Guilty" to whatever they can prove against her: namely, having the things in her house, knowing that they were stolen. I think it is her wisest course. No questions will be asked: no one will believe that a woman in her position could actually be guilty of receiving stolen goods so worthless: it will be understood by everybody that she is screening someone—some close relation—even at the risk of her own life.'

I replied by a groan of dissent.

'Jenny is not an actress for nothing. She ought not to have bought the things at all: or she ought to have destroyed them: this I suppose she would have done, but she forgot: she was wholly occupied in saving you. We must remember that with gratitude unspeakable, Will.'

'Yes, wife, God knows I do.'

'The world has been told over and over again that poor Jenny was once an Orange Girl: do people ever expect Orange Girls to come of respectable parents? To take guilt upon yourself—in order to screen your mother—will appear to the world as a noble and generous act. It would have taken you and me, Will, a month to discover the best way out of the trouble. But Jenny saw her way at once.'

In the end Alice proved to be right. Jenny chose the very best thing possible, as you shall see.