"Yes," she answered fiercely. "You have convicted him."
Murgatroyd drew his head slightly to one side; pursed up his lips; drew his brows together; and narrowed his eyes before he spoke:—
"Did you assume for an instant, Mrs. Challoner, that I was such a bungler as to release your husband at the first trial—for all the world to know—to suspect? When I said to you that I would set your husband free, did I say—when?"
Of the scene that followed Miriam Challoner never retained a very clear impression. She remembered that at first, as if in a trance, she kept repeating his last word, while by degrees its meaning stole in upon her; then of a sensation of being about to faint through mere excess of joy. Suddenly the thought of her temerity flashed through her brain—the enormity of the thing she had done; and she would have gone on her knees at his feet had he not caught her in time. Quickly recovering, she looked up at him. Somehow his face seemed to hold little resentment now—too little, in fact, to suit her surprising desire to humble herself in his sight.
"After all, she's rather a fool of a woman," his expression had plainly said to her overwrought senses, "and I will spare her." And yet she craved so to hear words of pardon from his lips, that she broke out almost breathlessly:—
"You will forgive me—you must.... I have done you an unutterable injury, I know." She stopped, and then with a sudden lapse to her old air of fear: "Oh, but what will happen now—what will happen to Laurie? I have failed you; you have the right to ..."
Once more cold and indifferent, Murgatroyd looked out of the window, though he interrupted her last words by saying frigidly:—
"When I make agreements, Mrs. Challoner, I keep them. You may be sure that I shall keep this one."
Still awed in a measure by his masterful personality, but with joy in her heart, Miriam Challoner started to leave the office.
With a gesture Murgatroyd checked her quickly.