Love never is.
Britz, recognizing instinctively the genuineness of the woman's love, passed over its ennobling aspect, to find therein a potent influence for the solution of the crime with which he was engaged.

The girl had unconsciously revealed herself to him as a means to an end--that end being the discovery and punishment of the murderer of Herbert Whitmore.
Had Beard been an experienced criminal, he would have known that no walls have more ears, nor more delicately attuned ears, than prison walls.

And that knowledge would have inspired a suspicion of the very bars against which he pressed his fevered face.

But being without previous jail experience, he said in a voice as distinctly audible to Britz as if he had been talking directly to the detective,-- "Then you don't believe for a single instant the terrible accusation they have lodged against me ?" "No one who knows you can possibly believe it," she answered in a tone of conviction.
"Dearest," he said, adopting a confidential air, "I could leave this prison to-morrow were I so inclined.

They haven't the least particle of evidence against me--they cannot have.