"I have been acquitted--thanks partly to your own evidence--and yet you of all women will not take me in! Do you mean to tell me that you actually think I did it still ?" Rachel fully expected an affirmative.

She was prepared for that opinion now from all the world; but for once a surprise was in store for her.
The pale woman shifted her eyes, then raised them doggedly, and the look in them brought a sudden glow to Rachel's heart.
"No, I don't think that, and never did," said the one independent witness for the defence.

"But others do, and I am too near where it happened; it might empty my house and keep it empty." Rachel seized her hand.
"Never mind, never mind," she whispered.

"It is better, ten thousand times, that you should believe in me, that any woman should! Thank you, and God bless you, for that!" She was turning away, when she faced about upon the steps, gazing past the woman who believed in her, along the passage beyond, an unspoken question beneath the tears in her eyes.
"He is not here," said the landlady, quickly.
"But he did get over it ?" "So we hope; but he was at death's door that morning, and for days and weeks.

Now he's abroad again--I'm sure I don't know where." Rachel said good-night, and this time the door not only shut before she had time to change her mind again, but she heard the bolts shot as she reached the pavement.