did you tell me the world has said of you?" I asked. "What did you
tell me my friends would say of you? 'Not Proven won't do for us. If the
jury have done him an injustice--if he _is_ innocent--let him prove it.'
Those were the words you put into the mouths of my friends. I adopt them
for mine! I say Not Proven won't do for _me._ Prove your right, Eustace,
to a verdict of Not Guilty. Why have you let three years pass without
doing it? Shall I guess why? You have waited for your wife to help you.
Here she is, my darling, ready to help you with all her heart and soul.
Here she is, with one object in life--to show the world and to show the
Scotch Jury that her husband is an innocent man!"

I had roused myself; my pulses were throbbing, my voice rang through the
room. Had I roused _him_? What was his answer?

"Read the Trial." That was his answer.

I seized him by the arm. In my indignation and my despair I shook him
with all my strength. God forgive me, I could almost have struck him for
the tone in which he had spoken and the look that he had cast on me!

"I have told you that I mean to read the Trial," I said. "I mean to
read it, line by line, with you. Some inexcusable mistake has been made.
Evidence in your favor that might have been found has not been found.
Suspicious circumstances have not been investigated. Crafty people have
not been watched. Eustace! the conviction of some dreadful oversight,
committed by you or by the persons who helped you, is firmly settled
in my mind. The resolution to set that vile Verdict right was the first
resolution that came to me when I first heard of it in the next room. We
_will_ set it right! We _must_ set it right--for your sake, for my sake,
for the sake of our children if we are blessed with children. Oh, my own
love, don't look at me with those cold eyes! Don't answer me in those
hard tones! Don't treat me as if I were talking ignorantly and madly of
something that can never be!"

Still I never roused him. His next words were spoken compassionately
rather than coldly--that was all.

"My defense was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land," he
said. "After such men have done their utmost, and have failed--my poor
Valeria, what can you, what can I, do? We can only submit."

"Never!" I cried. "The greatest lawyers are mortal men; the greatest
lawyers have made mistakes before now. You can't deny that."

"Read the Trial." For the third time he said those cruel words,