My

not- -a poor girl who has nobody else to speak for her. I am as respectable as you are, if you come to that. name is Hoighty. My parents are in business, and my mamma has seen better days, and mixed in the best of company.'

There, Miss Hoighty lifted her handkerchief again to her face, and burst modestly into tears behind it.

It was certainly hard to hold her responsible for what had happened. I answered as kindly as I could; and I attempted to speak to Major Fitz David in her defence. He knew what

terrible anxieties were oppressing me at that moment; and considerately refusing to hear a word, he took the task of consoling his young prima donna entirely on himself. What he said to her I neither heard nor cared to hear; he spoke in a whisper. It ended in his pacifying Miss Hoighty, by kissing her hand, and leading her (as he might have led a duchess) out of the room.

'I hope that foolish girl has not annoyed you-at such a time as this?' he said, very earnestly, when he returned to the sofa. 'I can't tell you how grieved I am at what has happened. I was careful to warn you, as you may remember. Still, if I could only have foreseen—— ’

I let him proceed no farther. No human forethought could have provided against what had happened. Besides, dreadful as the discovery had been, I would rather have made it, and suffer under it, as I was suffering now, than have been kept in the dark. I told him this. And then I turned to the one subject that was now of any interest to me-the subject of my unhappy husband.

'How did he come to this house?' I asked.

He came here with Mr. Benjamin, shortly after I returned,'

the Major replied.

'Long after I was taken ill?'

'No. I had just sent for the doctor-feeling seriously alarmed about you.'

'What brought him here? Did he return to the hotel, and miss me?'

'Yes. He returned earlier than he had anticipated; and he felt uneasy at not finding you at the hotel.'

'Did he suspect me of being with you? Did he come here from the hotel?'

'No. He appears to have gone first to Mr. Benjamin, to inquire about you. What he heard from your old friend, I cannot say. I only know that Mr. Benjamin accompanied him when he came here.'

This brief explanation was quite enough for me I understood what had happened. Eustace would easily frighten simple old Benjamin about my absence from the hotel; and, once alarmed, Benjamin would be persuaded without difficulty to repeat the few words which had passed between us, on the subject of Major Fitz-David. My husband's presence in the Major's house was perfectly explained. But his extraordinary conduct in leaving the room, at the very time when I was just recovering my senses, still remained to be accounted for. Major Fitz-David looked seriously embarrassed when I put the question to him.

'I hardly know how to explain it to you,' he said. 'Eustace has surprised and disappointed me.'

He spoke very gravely. His looks told me more than his words his looks alarmed me.

:

'Eustace has not quarrelled with you?' I said.

'Oh, no!'

'He understands that you have not broken your promise to him?'

'Certainly. My young vocalist (Miss Hoighty) told the doctor exactly what had happened; and the doctor in her presence repeated the statement to your husband.'

'Did the doctor see the "Trial"?'

"Neither the doctor nor Mr. Benjamin has seen the "Trial." I have locked it up; and I have carefully kept the terrible

H

story of your connexion with the prisoner a secret from all of them. Mr. Benjamin evidently has his suspicions. But the doctor has no idea, and Miss Hoighty has no idea, of the true cause of your fainting fit. They both believe that you are subject to serious nervous attacks; and that your husband's name is really Woodville. All that the truest friend could do to spare Eustace, I have done. He persists, nevertheless, in blaming me for letting you enter my house. And worse, far worse than this, he persists in declaring that the event of to-day has fatally estranged you from him. "There is an end of our married life," he said to me, "now she knows that I am the man who was tried at Edinburgh for poisoning my wife!"'

I rose from the sofa in horror.

'Good God!' I cried; 'does Eustace suppose that I doubt his innocence?'

'He denies that it is possible for you, or for anybody, to believe in his innocence,' the Major replied.

Help me to the door,' I said. 'Where is he? I must and I will see him!'

I dropped back exhausted on the sofa as I said the words. Major Fitz David poured out a glass of wine from the bottle on the table, and insisted on my drinking it.

'You shall see him,' said the Major. I promise you that. The doctor has forbidden him to leave the house, until you have seen him. Only wait a little! My poor dear lady, wait, if it is only for a few minutes, until you are stronger!'

I had no choice but to obey him. Oh, those miserable helpless minutes on the sofa! I cannot write of them without shuddering at the recollection-even at this distance of time.

Bring him here!' I said. 'Pray, pray, bring him here!' 'Who is to persuade him to come back?' asked the Major, sadly. How can I, how can anybody, prevail with a mana madman I had almost said!—who could leave you at the moment when you first opened your eyes on him? I saw

Eustace alone, in the next room, while the doctor was in attendance on you. I tried to shake his obstinate distrust of your belief in his innocence, and of my belief in his innocence, by every argument and every appeal that an old friend could address to him. He had but one answer to give me. Reason as I might, and plead as I might, he still persisted in referring me to the Scotch Verdict.'

'The Scotch Verdict?' I repeated. 'What is that?' The Major looked surprised at the question.

'Have you really never heard of the Trial?' he said.

'Never.'

'I thought it strange,' he went on, when you told me you had found out your husband's true name, that the discovery appeared to have suggested no painful association to your mind. It is not more than three years since all England was talking of your husband. One can hardly wonder at his taking refuge, poor fellow, in an assumed name! Where could you have been at the time?'

'Did you say it was three years ago?' I asked.

'Yes.'

I understood my strange ignorance of what appeared to be so well known to other people. Three years since, my father was alive. I was living with him, in a country house in Italy-up in the mountains, near Siena. We never saw an English newspaper, or met with an English traveller, for weeks and weeks together. There might certainly have been some reference made to the famous Scotch Trial in my father's letters from England. If there was, he never told me of it. Or, if he did mention the case, I must have forgotten it in course of time. 'Tell me,' I said to the Major, 'what has the Verdict to do with my husband's horrible doubt of us? Eustace is a free man. The verdict was Not Guilty, of course?'

Major Fitz David shook his head sadly.

'Eustace was tried in Scotland,' he said. "There is a

verdict allowed by the Scotch law, which (so far as I know) is not permitted by the laws of any other civilized country on the face of the earth. When the jury are in doubt whether to condemn or acquit the prisoner brought before them, they are permitted, in Scotland, to express that doubt by a form of compromise. If there is not evidence enough, on the one hand, to justify them in finding a prisoner guilty, and not evidence enough, on the other hand, to thoroughly convince them that a prisoner is innocent, they extricate themselves from the difficulty by finding a verdict of Not Proven.'

'Was that the verdict when Eustace was tried?' I asked. 'Yes.'

The jury were not quite satisfied that my husband was guilty and not quite satisfied that my husband was innocent? Is that what the Scotch Verdict means?'

For three years

"That is what the Scotch Verdict means. that doubt about him in the minds of the jury who tried him has stood on public record.'

Oh, my poor darling! my innocent martyr! I understood it at last. The false name in which he had married me; the terrible words he had spoken when he had warned me to respect his secret; the still more terrible doubt that he felt of me at that moment-it was all intelligible to my sympathies; it was all clear to my understanding, now. I got up again from the sofa, strong in a daring resolution which the Scotch Verdict had suddenly kindled in me-a resolution, at once too sacred and too desperate to be confided, in the first instance, to any other than my husband's ear.

Take me to Eustace,' I said. I am strong enough to bear anything now.'

After one searching look at me, the Major silently offered me his arm. We left the room together.