The nature of the secret mattered nothing in the meanwhile.

Here was the motive, without which the case against John Buchanan Steel must have remained incomplete.

Langholm added it to his notes--and trembled! He had compunction enough about the major triumph which now seemed in certain store for him; the larger it loomed, the less triumphant and the more tragic was its promise.

And, with all human perversity, an unforeseen and quite involuntary sympathy with Steel was the last complication in Langholm's mind.
He had to think of Rachel in order to harden his heart against her husband; and that ground was the most dangerous of all.

It was strange to Langholm to battle against _that_ by the bedside of a weaker brother fallen in the same fight.