46 chapters
13 hour read
Selected Chapters
46 chapters
CHAPTER I. — ELMA’S STRANGER.
CHAPTER I. — ELMA’S STRANGER.
It was late when Elma reached the station. Her pony had jibbed on the way downhill, and the train was just on the point of moving off as she hurried upon the platform. Old Matthews, the stout and chubby-cheeked station-master, seized her most unceremoniously by the left arm, and bundled her into a carriage. He had known her from a child, so he could venture upon such liberties. “Second class, miss? Yes, miss. Here y’are. Look sharp, please. Any more goin’ on? All right, Tom! Go ahead there!” And
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II. — TWO’S COMPANY.
CHAPTER II. — TWO’S COMPANY.
Elma was just engaged in debating with herself internally how a young lady of perfect manners and impeccable breeding, travelling without a chaperon, ought to behave under such trying circumstances, after having allowed herself to be drawn unawares into familiar conversation with a most attractive young artist, when all of a sudden a rapid jerk of the carriage succeeded in extricating her perforce, and against her will, from this awkward dilemma. Something sharp pulled up their train unexpectedl
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III. — CYRIL WARING’S BROTHER.
CHAPTER III. — CYRIL WARING’S BROTHER.
It was nine o’clock that self-same night, and two men sat together in a comfortable sitting-room under the gabled roofs of Staple Inn, Holborn. It was as cosy a nook as any to be found within the four-mile radius, and artistic withal in its furniture and decorations. In the biggest arm-chair by the empty grate, a young man with a flute paused for a moment, irresolute. He was a handsome young man, expressive eyes, and a neatly-cut brown beard—for all the world like Cyril Waring’s. Indeed, if Elma
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV. — INSIDE THE TUNNEL.
CHAPTER IV. — INSIDE THE TUNNEL.
And, indeed, if brain-waves had been in question at all, they ought, without a doubt, to have informed Guy Waring that at the very moment when he was going out to send off his telegram, his brother Cyril was sitting disconsolate, with dark blue lips and swollen eyelids, on the footboard of the railway carriage in the Lavington tunnel. Cyril was worn out with digging by this time, for he had done his best once more to clear away the sand towards the front of the train in the vague hope that he mi
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V. — GRATITUDE.
CHAPTER V. — GRATITUDE.
“There were only two of you, then, in the last carriage?” Guy asked with deep interest, the very next morning, as Cyril, none the worse for his long imprisonment, sat quietly in their joint chambers at Staple Inn, recounting the previous day’s adventures. “Yes. Only two of us. It was awfully fortunate. And the carriage that was smashed had nobody at all, except in the first compartment, which escaped being buried. So there were no lives lost, by a miracle, you may say. But several of the people
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI. — TWO STRANGE MEETINGS.
CHAPTER VI. — TWO STRANGE MEETINGS.
“Mrs. Hugh Holker, at home, Saturday, May 29th, 3 to 6.30. Chetwood Court; tennis.” Cyril Waring read it out with a little thrill of triumph. To be sure, it was by no means certain that Elma would be there; but still, Chetwood Court was well within range of Tilgate town, and Montague Nevitt felt convinced, he said, the Holkers were friends of the Cliffords and the Kelmscotts. “For my part,” Guy remarked, balancing a fragment of fried sole on his fork as he spoke, “I’m not going all that way down
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII. — KELMSCOTT OF TILGATE.
CHAPTER VII. — KELMSCOTT OF TILGATE.
To both Elma and her mother this meeting between Colonel Kelmscott and Guy Waring was full of mystery. For the Kelmscotts, of Tilgate Park, were the oldest county family in all that part of Surrey; and Colonel Kelmscott himself passed as the proudest man of that haughtiest house in Southern England. What, therefore, could have made him give so curious and almost imperceptible a start the moment Guy Waring’s name was mentioned in conversation? Not a word that he said, to be sure, implied to Guy h
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII. — ELMA BREAKS OUT.
CHAPTER VIII. — ELMA BREAKS OUT.
Mrs. Clifford returned from Chetwood Court that clay in by no means such high spirits as when she went there. In the first place, she hadn’t succeeded in throwing Elma and Granville Kelmscott into one another’s company at all, and in the second place Elma had talked much under her very nose, for half-an-hour at a stretch, with the unknown young painter fellow. When Elma was asked out anywhere else in the country for the next six weeks or so, Mrs. Clifford made up her mind strictly to inquire in
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX. — AND AFTER?
CHAPTER IX. — AND AFTER?
When Elma woke up next morning, it was broad daylight. She woke with a start, to find herself lying upon the bed where she had flung herself. For a minute or two she couldn’t recollect or recall to herself how it had all come about. It was too remote from anything in her previous waking thought, too dream-like, too impossible. Then an unspeakable horror flashed over her unawares. Her face flushed hot. Shame and terror overcame her. She buried her head in her hands in an agony of awe. Her own sel
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X. — COLONEL KELMSCOTT’S REPENTANCE.
CHAPTER X. — COLONEL KELMSCOTT’S REPENTANCE.
Elma Clifford wasn’t the only person who passed a terrible night and suffered a painful awakening on the morning after the Holkers’ garden-party. Colonel Kelmscott, too, had his bad half-hour or so before he finally fell asleep; and he woke up next day to a sense of shame and remorse far more definite, and, therefore, more poignant and more real than Elma’s. Hour after hour, indeed, he lay there on his bed, afraid to toss or turn lest he should wake Lady Emily, but with his limbs all fevered and
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI. — A FAMILY JAR.
CHAPTER XI. — A FAMILY JAR.
Hour after hour the unhappy man lay still as death on his bed and reasoned in vain with his accusing conscience. To be sure, he said to himself, no man was bound by the law of England to name his heir. It is for the eldest son himself to come forward and make his claim. If Guy and Cyril could prove their title to the Tilgate estates when he himself was dead, that was their private business. He wasn’t bound to do anything special to make the way easy for them beforehand. But still, when he saw th
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII. — IN SILENCE AND TEARS.
CHAPTER XII. — IN SILENCE AND TEARS.
When he had time to think, Colonel Kelmscott determined in his own mind that he would still do his best to save Granville, whether Granville himself wished it or otherwise. So he proceeded to take all the necessary steps for breaking the entail and raising the money he needed for Guy and Cyril. In all this, Granville neither acquiesced nor dissented. He signed mechanically whatever documents his father presented to him, and he stood by his bargain with a certain sullen, undeviating, hard-feature
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII. — BUSINESS FIRST.
CHAPTER XIII. — BUSINESS FIRST.
The manager at Messrs. Drummond, Coutts and Barclay’s, Limited, received Colonel Kelmscott with distinguished consideration. A courteous, conciliatory sort of man, that manager, with his close-shaven face and his spotless shirt-front. “Five minutes, my dear sir?” he exclaimed, with warmth, motioning his visitor blandly into the leather-covered chair. “Half an hour, if you wish it. We always have leisure to receive our clients. Any service we can render them, we’re only too happy.” “But this is a
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV. — MUSIC HATH POWER.
CHAPTER XIV. — MUSIC HATH POWER.
For Mr. Montague Nevitt was a cautious, cool, and calculating person. He knew, better than most of us that knowledge is power. So when the manager mentioned to him casually in the way of business the names of Guy and Cyril Waring, Mr. Montague Nevitt didn’t respond at once, “Oh, dear yes; one of them’s my most intimate personal friend, and the other’s his brother,” as a man of less discretion might have been tempted to do. For, in the first place, by finding out, or seeming to find out, the fact
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV. — THE PATH OF DUTY.
CHAPTER XV. — THE PATH OF DUTY.
Down at Tilgate, meanwhile, Elma Clifford had met more than once with Cyril Waring at friends’ houses around, for ever since the accident, Society had made up its mind that Elma ought to marry her companion in the tunnel; and, when Society once makes up its mind on a question of this sort, why, it does its level best in the long run to insure the fulfilment of its own prediction. Wherever Elma had met her painter, however, during those few short weeks, she had seen him only before the quizzing e
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI. — STRUGGLE AND VICTORY.
CHAPTER XVI. — STRUGGLE AND VICTORY.
Elma hurried home full of intense misgivings. She dreaded having to meet her mother’s eye. How on earth could she hide from that searching glance the whole truth as to what had happened in the wood that morning? When she reached home, however, she learned to her relief, from the maid who opened the door to her, that their neighbour, Mr. Gilbert Gildersleeve, the distinguished Q.C., had dropped in for lunch, and this chance diversion supplied Elma with a little fresh courage to face the inevitabl
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII. — VISIONS OF WEALTH.
CHAPTER XVII. — VISIONS OF WEALTH.
Cyril Waring, thus dismissed, and as in honour bound, hurried up to London with a mind preoccupied by many pressing doubts and misgivings. He thought much of Elma, but he thought much, too, of sundry strange events that had happened of late to his own private fortunes. For one thing he had sold, and sold mysteriously, at a very good price, the picture of Sardanapalus in the glade at Chetwood. A well-known London dealer had written down to him at Tilgate making an excellent offer for the unfinish
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
“GWENDOLINE.”
“GWENDOLINE.”
She sealed it up in haste and ran out with it, all tremors, to the post by herself. Her hands were hot. She was in a high fever. But Mr. Montague Nevitt, that man of feeling, thus balked of his game, walked off his disappointment as well as he could by a long smart tramp across the springy downs, lunching at a wayside inn on bread and cheese and beer, and descending as the evening shades drew in on the Guildford station. Thence he ran up to town by the first fast train, and sauntered sulkily acr
1 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX. — SELF OR BEARER.
CHAPTER XIX. — SELF OR BEARER.
At Charing Cross Station Montague Nevitt bought a Financial News and proceeded forthwith to his own rooms to read of the sudden collapse of his pet speculation. It was only too true. The Rio Negro Diamond and Sapphire Mines had gone entirely in one of the periodical South American crashes which involved them in the liabilities of several other companies. A call would be made at once to the full extent of the nominal capital. And he would have to find three thousand pounds down to meet the demand
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX. — MONTAGUE NEVITT FINESSES.
CHAPTER XX. — MONTAGUE NEVITT FINESSES.
Guy rose mechanically, and followed him to the door. Nevitt still held the forged cheque in his hand. Guy thought of it so to himself in plain terms, as the forgery. Yet somehow, he knew not why, he followed that sinister figure through the passage and down the stairs like one irresistibly and magnetically drawn forward. Why, he couldn’t let any one go forth upon the streets of London—with the cheque he himself had forged in his hands—unwatched and unshadowed. Nevitt called a cab; and jumped in,
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI. — COLONEL KELMSCOTT’S PUNISHMENT.
CHAPTER XXI. — COLONEL KELMSCOTT’S PUNISHMENT.
While Montague Nevitt was thus congenially engaged in pulling off his treble coup of settling his own share in the Rio Negro deficit, pocketing three thousand pounds, pro tem, for incidental expenses, and getting Guy Waring thoroughly into his power by his knowledge of a forgery, two other events were taking place elsewhere, which were destined to prove of no small importance to the future of the twins and their immediate surroundings. Things generally were converging towards a crisis in their a
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII. — CROSS PURPOSES.
CHAPTER XXII. — CROSS PURPOSES.
At the Gildersleeves’, too, the house that day was alive with excitement. Gwendoline had thrown herself into a fever of alarm as soon as she had posted her letter to Granville Kelmscott. She went up to her own room, flung herself wildly on the bed, and sobbed herself into a half-hysterical, half-delirious state, long before dinner-time. She hardly knew herself at first how really ill she was. Her hands were hot and her forehead burning. But she disregarded such mere physical and medical details
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIII. — GUY IN LUCK.
CHAPTER XXIII. — GUY IN LUCK.
Guy Waring reached Waterloo ten minutes too late. Nevitt had gone on by the West of England express. The porter at the labelling place “minded the gentleman well.” He was a sharp-looking gentleman, with a queer look about the eyes, and a dark moustache curled round at the corners. “Yes, yes,” Guy cried eagerly, “that’s him right enough. The eyes mark the man. And where was he going to?” “He had his things labelled,” the porter said, “for Plymouth.” “And when does the next train start?” Guy inqui
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIV. — A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING.
CHAPTER XXIV. — A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING.
On the very same day that Guy Waring visited Mambury, where his mother was married, Montague Nevitt had hunted up the entry of Colonel Kelmscott’s wedding in the church register. Nevitt’s behaviour, to say the truth, wasn’t quite so black as Guy Waring painted it. He had gone off with the extra three thousand in his pocket, to be sure; but he didn’t intend to appropriate it outright to his own uses. He merely meant to give Guy a thoroughly good fright, as it wasn’t really necessary the call shou
44 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
“A SINCERE WELL-WISHER.”
“A SINCERE WELL-WISHER.”
Guy gazed at the strange missive long and dubiously. “A warrant is out.” He scarcely knew what to do. Oh, for time, time, time! Had Cyril sent this? Or was it some final device of that fiend, Nevitt?...
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVI. — A CHANCE MEETING.
CHAPTER XXVI. — A CHANCE MEETING.
There wasn’t much time left, however, for Guy to make up his mind in. He must decide at once. Should he accept this mysterious warning or not? Pure fate decided it. As he hesitated he heard a boy crying in the street. It was the special-edition-fiend calling his evening paper. The words the boy said Guy didn’t altogether catch; but the last sentence of all fell on his ear distinctly. He started in horror. It was an awful sound: “Warrant issued to-day for the apprehension of Waring.” Then the let
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVII. — SOMETHING TO THEIR ADVANTAGE.
CHAPTER XXVII. — SOMETHING TO THEIR ADVANTAGE.
At Tilgate and Chetwood next morning, two distinguished households were thrown into confusion by the news in the papers. To Colonel Kelmscott and to Elma Clifford alike that news came with crushing force and horror. A murder, said the Times, had been committed in Devonshire, in a romantic dell, on the skirts of Dartmoor. No element of dramatic interest was wanting to the case; persons, place, and time were all equally remarkable. The victim of the outrage was Mr. Montague Nevitt, confidential cl
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVIII. — MISTAKEN IDENTITY.
CHAPTER XXVIII. — MISTAKEN IDENTITY.
To Cyril Waring himself, the arrest at Dover came as an immense surprise; rather a surprise, indeed, than a shock just at first, for he could only treat it as a mistaken identity. The man the police wanted was Guy, not himself; and that Guy should have done it was clearly incredible. As he landed from the Ostend packet, recalled to England unexpectedly by the announcement that the Rio Negro Diamond Mines had gone with a crash—and no doubt involved Guy in the common ruin—Cyril was astonished to f
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIX. — WOMAN’S INTUITION
CHAPTER XXIX. — WOMAN’S INTUITION
Next morning, Cyril Waring appeared once more in the Sessions House for the preliminary investigation on the charge of murder. As he entered, a momentary hush pervaded the room; then, suddenly, from a seat beneath, a woman’s voice burst forth, quite low, yet loud enough to be heard by all the magistrates on the bench. “Why, mother,” it said, in a very tremulous tone, “it isn’t Guy himself at all; don’t you see it’s Cyril?” The words were so involuntarily spoken, and in such hushed awe and amaze,
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
“CYRIL.”
“CYRIL.”
He folded the letter, and sent it off to the temporary address at the West-End where Elma had told him that she and her mother would spend the night in London. Very late that evening a ring came at the bell. Cyril ran to the door. It was a boy with a telegram. He opened it, and read it with breathless excitement. “Whatever Guy may have said, you are quite mistaken. There’s a mystery somewhere. Keep his letter and show it to me. I may, perhaps, be able to unravel the tangle. I’m more than ever co
55 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
“ELMA.”
“ELMA.”
But the telegram brought little peace to Cyril. Of what value were Elma’s vague intuitions now, by the side of Guy’s own positive confession? With his very own hand Guy admitted that he had done it. Cyril went to bed that night, the unhappiest, loneliest man in London. What Guy was, he was. He felt himself almost like the actual murderer....
33 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXI. — “GOLDEN JOYS.”
CHAPTER XXXI. — “GOLDEN JOYS.”
The voyage to the Cape was long and tedious. On the whole way out, Guy made but few friends, and talked very little to his fellow passengers. That unhappy recognition by Granville Kelmscott the evening he went on board the Cetewayo poisoned the fugitive’s mind for the entire passage. He felt himself, in fact, a moral outcast; he slunk away from his kind; he hardly dared to meet Kelmscott’s eyes for shame, whenever he passed him. But for one thing at least he was truly grateful. Though Kelmscott
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXII. — A NEW DEPARTURE.
CHAPTER XXXII. — A NEW DEPARTURE.
A fortnight later, one sultry afternoon, Granville Kelmscott found himself, after various strange adventures and escapes by the way, in a Koranna hut, far in the untravelled heart of the savage Barolong country. The tenement where he sat, or more precisely squatted, was by no means either a commodious or sweet-scented one. Yet it was the biggest of a group on the river-bank, some five feet high from floor to roof, so that a Kelmscott couldn’t possibly stand erect at full length in it; and it was
39 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
“ELMA.”
“ELMA.”
When Cyril Waring received that note next morning he kissed it reverently, and put it away in his desk among a bundle of others. But he said to himself sternly in his own soul for all that, “Never, while Guy still rests under that cloud! And how it’s ever to be lifted from him is to me inconceivable.”...
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXIV. — A STROKE FOR FREEDOM.
CHAPTER XXXIV. — A STROKE FOR FREEDOM.
In Africa, meanwhile, during those eighteen months, King Khatsua had kept his royal word. He had held his two European prisoners under close watch and ward in the Koranna hut he had assigned them for their residence. Like most other negro princes, indeed, Khatsua was a shrewd man of business in his own way; and while he meant to prevent the English strangers from escaping seaward with news of the new El Dorado they had discovered in Barolong land, he hadn’t the least idea of turning away on that
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXV. — PERILS BY THE WAY.
CHAPTER XXXV. — PERILS BY THE WAY.
Three weeks later, two torn and tattered, half-starved Europeans sat under a burning South African sun by the dry bed of a shrunken summer torrent. It was in the depths of Namaqua land, among the stony Karoo; and the fugitives were straggling, helplessly and hopelessly, seaward, thirsty and weary, through a half-hostile country, making their marches as best they could at dead of night and resting by day where the natives would permit them. Their commissariat had indeed been a lean and hungry one
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVI. — DESERTED.
CHAPTER XXXVI. — DESERTED.
That was almost the last thing Granville Kelmscott knew. Some strange shadowy dreams, to be sure, disturbed the lethargy into which he fell soon after; but they were intermittent and indefinite. He was vaguely aware of being lifted with gentle care into somebody’s arms, and of the somebody staggering along with him, not without considerable difficulty, over the rough stony ground of that South African plateau. He remembered also, as in a trance, some sound of angry voices—a loud expostulation—a
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVII. — AUX ARMES!
CHAPTER XXXVII. — AUX ARMES!
For a day or two more, Granville remained seriously ill in the dirty hut. At the end of that time, weak and wasted as he was, he insisted upon getting up and setting out alone on his long march seaward. It was a wild resolve. He was utterly unfit for it. The hospitable Namaqua, whose wives had nursed him well through that almost hopeless illness, did his best to persuade the rash Englishman from so mad a course, by gestures and entreaties, in his own mute language. But Granville was obstinate. H
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVIII. — NEWS FROM THE CAPE.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. — NEWS FROM THE CAPE.
At the Holkers’ at Chetwood, one evening some days later, Cyril Waring met Elma Clifford once more, the first time for months, and had twenty minutes’ talk in the tea-room alone with her. Contrary to his rule, he had gone to the Holkers’ party that night, for a man can’t remain a recluse all his life, no matter how hard he tries, merely because his brother’s suspected of having committed a murder. In course of time, the attitude palls upon him. For the first year after Guy’s sudden and mysteriou
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXIX. — A GLEAM OF LIGHT.
CHAPTER XXXIX. — A GLEAM OF LIGHT.
Next day but one, the Companion of St. Michael and St. George came in to Craighton with evil tidings. He had heard in the village that Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve was ill—very seriously ill. The judge had come home from the Holkers’ the other evening much upset by the arrival of Gwendoline’s telegram. “Though why on earth should that upset him,” Mr. Clifford continued, screwing up his small face with a very wise air, “is more than I can conceive; for I’m sure the Gildersleeves angled hard enough in
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XL. — THE BOLT FALLS.
CHAPTER XL. — THE BOLT FALLS.
All the way home on that long journey from Cape Town, as the two half-brothers lounged on deck together in their canvas chairs, Granville Kelmscott was wholly at a loss to understand what seemed to him Guy Waring’s unaccountable and almost incredible levity. The man’s conduct didn’t in the least resemble that of a person who is returning to give himself up on a charge of wilful murder. On the contrary, Guy showed no signs of remorse or mental agony in any way; he seemed rather elated, instead, a
14 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XLI. — WHAT JUDGE?
CHAPTER XLI. — WHAT JUDGE?
For many days, meanwhile, Sir Gilbert had hovered between life and death, and Elma had watched his illness daily with profound and absorbing interest. For in her deep, intuitive way she felt certain to herself that their one chance now lay in Sir Gilbert’s own sense of remorse and repentance. She didn’t yet know, to be sure—what Sir Gilbert himself knew—that if he recovered he would, in all probability, have to sit in trial on another man for the crime he had himself committed. But she did feel
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XLII. — UNEXPECTED EVIDENCE.
CHAPTER XLII. — UNEXPECTED EVIDENCE.
When Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve left Spa, he left with a ruddy glow of recovered health on his bronzed red cheek; for in spite of anxiety and repentance and doubt, the man’s iron frame would somehow still assert itself. When he took his seat on the bench in court that morning, he looked so haggard and ill with fatigue and remorse that even Elma Clifford herself pitied him. A hushed whisper ran round among the spectators below that the judge wasn’t fit to try the case before him. And indeed he wasn
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XLIII. — SIR GILBERT’S TEMPTATION.
CHAPTER XLIII. — SIR GILBERT’S TEMPTATION.
Cyril felt all was up. Elma glanced at him trembling. This was horrible, inconceivable, inexplicable, fatal. The very stars in their courses seem to fight against Guy. Blind chance checkmated them. No hope was left now, save in Gilbert Gildersleeve’s own sense of justice. But Sir Gilbert Gildersleeve sat there, transfixed with horror. No answering gleam now shot through his dull, glazed eye. For he alone knew that whatever made the case against the prisoner look worse, made his own position each
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XLIV. — AT BAY.
CHAPTER XLIV. — AT BAY.
Only two people in court doubted for one moment what the verdict would be. And those two were the pair who stood there on their trial. Sir Gilbert couldn’t believe the jury would convict an innocent man of the crime he himself had half unwittingly committed. Guy Waring couldn’t believe the jury would convict an innocent man of the crime he had never been guilty of. So those two doubted. To all the rest the verdict was a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, dead silence reigned everywhere in the co
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XLV. — ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
CHAPTER XLV. — ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
Granville helped him on his arm into the judge’s room amid profound silence. All the court was deeply stirred. A few personal friends hurried after him eagerly. Among them were the Warings, and Mrs. Clifford, and Elma. The judge staggered to a seat, and held Granville’s hand long and silently in his. Then his eye caught Elma’s. He turned to her gratefully. “Thank you, young lady,” he said, in a very thick voice. “You were extremely good. I forget your name. But you helped me greatly.” There was
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter