"I hope you will believe me when I tell you that not one word of that poor girl's story was ever known to me before. Had it been, I should not have left it to you to befriend her and care for her child. I had always known that Victor was wild and reckless, but young men seldom make confidants of their mentors. I did not pry into his affairs. I think perhaps I knew in a general way that they would not bear it, and--I shrank from it. I do not expect you to understand my feeling toward Victor. Wayward as he had always been, I yet loved him. There was good in the boy. I believe now that had he lived you might have won him to a better life. I had hoped until that hour that it might be. But with life snuffed out, his day was done. And it was your hand had struck him down!" She shook her head in sorrowful protest. "I know--I know. But to me--in all these years--it was your hand." He spoke in fragments, with silences in between. "You asked me that day what he said. Perhaps if I should tell you now it would be some extenuation at least." She looked up at him breathless. "What was it?" "As I bent over him he said, 'She's killed me, Dick.'" Margaret sank back in her chair. "And it was Rosalie!" "Yes,--Rosalie. But as he said it you stood above him with a smoking revolver in your hand--a revolver I had seen here, on your table, but a few months before." She opened a drawer and took it out. "It has been here ever since. He had a pair of them." He took the revolver in his hand and looked at it. It was of peculiar workmanship--the counterpart of one now in his own possession--the one he took out every now and then and looked at. He drew a quick sharp breath that was almost a groan,--then laid it down, saying quietly, "I did not know that. It might have changed everything if I had known. You see how strong it made the case against you. And then his saying--" "Did he say anything else?" she questioned eagerly. "Yes. He said, 'Don't prosecute. I deserved it.'" "And it was Rosalie!" she repeated. "It was Rosalie he tried to save. Oh, I am glad he said that--glad! Why didn't you tell her?" "There will be time for that." He marveled that she could think now of Rosalie. "Do you not see how all this misled me?" "I see. You thought it was his treatment of me he meant." "Yes. And then you told me once that if he ever tried to take the child--" "That I should kill him. I remember it. It was in the days when I was full of words.... And you believed I did it!"