When she told Willy that she could give up Ralph, were he a thousand times her brother, to such a death of sacrifice as he had pictured, she had not conceived of a death that would be the penalty of murder.

That Ralph would be innocent of the crime could not lessen the horror of such an end.

Then there was the certainty that conviction on such a charge would include the seizure of the property.

Rotha dwelt but little on the chances of an innocent man's acquittal.

The law was to her uninformed mind not an agent of justice, but an instrument of punishment, and to be apprehended was to be condemned.
Ralph must be kept out of the grip of the law.