Langholm when her host became a busy
man once more.

"I should make her guilty," said the novelist; "and she would marry a
man who believed in her innocence, and he wouldn't care two pins when
she told him the truth in the last chapter, and they would live happily
ever afterwards. Nobody would touch the serial rights. But that would be
a book!"

"Then do you think she really was guilty?"

And Rachel waited while he shrugged, her heart beating for no good
reason that she knew, except that she rather liked Mr. Langholm, and did
not wish to cease liking him on the spot. But it was to him that the
answer was big with fate; and he trifled and dallied with the issue of
the moment, little dreaming what a mark it was to leave upon his life,
while the paradox beloved of the literary took shape on his tongue.

"What does it matter what she was? What do the facts matter, Mrs. Steel,
when one has an idea like that for fiction? Fiction is truer than fact!"

"But you haven't answered my question."

Rachel meant to have that answer.

"Oh, well, as a matter of fact, I read the case pretty closely, and I
was thankful the jury brought in an acquittal. It required a little
imagination, but the truth always does. It is no treason to our host to
whisper that he has none. I remember having quite a heated argument with
him at the time. Oh, dear, no; she was no more guilty than you or I; but
it would be a thousand times more artistic if she were; and I should
make her so, by Jove!"

Rachel finished heir dinner in great tranquillity after this; but there
was a flush upon her face which had not been there before, and Langholm
received an astonishing smile when the ladies rose. He had been making
tardy atonement for his neglect of the aquiline lady, but Rachel had the
last word with him.

"You will come and see us, won't you?" she said. "I shall want to hear
how the plot works out."

"I am afraid it's one I can't afford to use," he said, "unless I stick
to foolish fact and make her innocent."

And she left him with a wry face, her own glowing again.

"You looked simply great--especially towards the end," whispered Morna
Woodgate in the drawing-room, for she alone knew how nervous Rachel had
been about what was indeed her social debut in Delverton.

The aquiline lady also had a word to say. Her eyes were like brown
beads, and her nose very long, which gave her indeed a hawk-like
appearance, somewhat unusual in a woman; but her grav