I do not see how there can be any case, and I have heard nothing from Dr.Thorndyke to lead me to suppose that he has really done anything in the matter.' Is this true, Dr.
Jervis?
Oh! do tell me the real truth about it! I have been so miserable and terrified since I heard this, and I was so full of hope before.

Tell me, is it true?
Will Reuben be sent to prison after all ?" In her agitation she laid her hands on my arm and looked up into my face with her grey eyes swimming with tears, and was so piteous, so trustful, and, withal, so bewitching that my reserve melted like snow before a July sun.
"It is not true," I answered, taking her hands in mine and speaking perforce in a low tone that I might not betray my emotion.

"If it were, it would mean that I have wilfully deceived you, that I have been false to our friendship; and how much that friendship has been to me, no one but myself will ever know." She crept a little closer to me with a manner at once penitent and wheedling.
"You are not going to be angry with me, are you?
It was foolish of me to listen to Mr.Lawley after all you have told me, and it did look like a want of trust in you, I know.

But you, who are so strong and wise, must make allowance for a woman who is neither.

It is all so terrible that I am quite unstrung; but say you are not really displeased with me, for that would hurt me most of all." Oh! Delilah! That concluding stroke of the shears severed the very last lock, and left me--morally speaking--as bald as a billiard ball.
Henceforth I was at her mercy and would have divulged, without a scruple, the uttermost secrets of my principal, but that that astute gentleman had placed me beyond the reach of temptation.
"As to being angry with you," I answered, "I am not, like Thorndyke, one to essay the impossible, and if I could be angry it would hurt me more than it would you.