Of this I was convinced, difficult as it made my future.

My mind refused to see guilt in a man who could meet my eye with just the look he gave me on leaving the courtroom, at the conclusion of his sister's triumphant examination.

It was a momentary glance, but I read it, I am sure, quite truthfully.
"You are the man," it said; but not in the old, bitter, and revengeful way voiced by his tongue before we came together in the one effort to save Carmel from what, in our short-sightedness and misunderstanding of her character, we had looked upon as the worst of humiliations and the most desperate of perils.

There was sadness in his conviction and an honest man's regret--which, if noted by those about us--was far more dangerous to my good name than the loudest of denunciations or the most acrimonious of assaults.

It put me in the worst of positions.