She had often asked
him by what stroke of luck he had got so fine a timepiece. But he
had never told her. Later, it had been stolen from him; and as he
had a mania for watches, that was why, perhaps--
God! was her mind veering back to her old idea as to his
responsibility for the crime committed in Dark Hollow? Yes; she
could not help it. Denial from a monster like this--a man who with
such memories and such spoil, could return home to wife and child,
with some gay and confused story of a great stroke in speculation
which had brought him in the price of the tavern it had long been
his ambition to own--what was denial from such lips worth, though
emphasised by the most sacred of oaths, and uttered under the
shadow of death. The judge was right. Oliver--whose ingenuous
story had restored his image to her mind, with some of its old
graces--had been the victim of circumstances and not John
Scoville. Henceforth, she would see him as such, and when she had
recovered a little from the effect of this sudden insight into the
revolting past, she would--
Her thoughts had reached this stage and her hand, in obedience to
the new mood, was lightly ruffling up the pages before her, when
she felt a light touch on her shoulder and turned with a start.
The judge was at her back. How long he had stood there she did not
know, nor did he say. The muttered exclamations which had escaped
her, the irrepressible cry of despair she had given when she first
recognised the identity of the "stranger" may have reached him
where he sat at the other end of the room, and drawn him
insensibly forward till he could overlook her shoulder as she
read, and taste with her the horror of these revelations which yet
were working so beneficent a result for him and his.
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