e not offended with me are you? Make it
up; and I will give you this pretty piece of embroidery when I have done
it. I am only a poor, solitary, deformed wretch, with a quaint turn of
mind; I mean no harm. Forgive me! indulge me! enlighten me!"

He resumed his childish ways; he recover, his innocent smile, with the
odd little puckers and wrinkles accompanying it at the corners of his
eyes. I began to doubt whether I might not have been unreasonably
hard on him. I penitently resolved to be more considerate toward his
infirmities of mind and body during the remainder of my visit.

"Let me go back for a moment, Mr. Dexter, to past times at Gleninch," I
said. "You agree with me in believing Eustace to be absolutely innocent
of the crime for which he was tried. Your evidence at the Trial tells me
that."

He paused over his work, and looked at me with a grave and stern
attention which presented his face in quite a new light.

"That is _our_ opinion," I resumed. "But it was not the opinion of the
Jury. Their verdict, you remember, was Not Proven. In plain English, the
Jury who tried my husband declined to express their opinion, positively
and publicly, that he was innocent. Am I right?"

Instead of answering, he suddenly put his embroidery back in the basket,
and moved the machinery of his chair, so as to bring it close by mine.

"Who told you this?" he asked.

"I found it for myself in a book."

Thus far his face had expressed steady attention--and no more. Now, for
the first time, I thought I saw something darkly passing over him which
betrayed itself to my mind as rising distrust.

"Ladies are not generally in the habit of troubling their heads about
dry questions of law," he said. "Mrs. Eustace Macallan the Second, you
must have some very powerful motive for turning your studies that way."

"I have a very powerful motive, Mr. Dexter My husband is resigned to the
Scotch Verdict His mother is resigned to it. His friends (so far as I
know) are resigned to it--"

"Well?"

"Well! I don't agree with my husband, or his mother, or his friends. I
refuse to submit to the Scotch Verdict."

The instant I said those words, the madness in him which I had hitherto
denied, seemed to break out. He suddenly stretched himself over his
chair: he pounced on me, with a hand on each of my shoulders; his wild
eyes questioned me fiercely, frantically, within a few inches of my
face.

"What do you mean?" he shouted, at the utmost p