“You remember, perhaps, how the Pelham divorce case ended. The judge in his summing up said that appearances were certainly against me, but there was no actual proof of my guilt. So strong, so subtle, so clever was the evidence against me, so skillfully was the plot woven, so greatly were circumstances in my husband’s favor, that the keenest, the most prudent, the most just and talented judge in England had nothing better to say for me than that my guilt was not clearly proven. “It was like the old Scotch verdict of ‘Not proven;’ and then the trial ended. My husband had not won, but I remained with a dark stain of guilt still upon me. My lawyers advised me to bring an action for perjury against those who had so falsely sworn my fair name away. I said to myself: ‘Oh, what use? God may in His own good time make my innocence clear.’ I cannot do anything for myself; the more notorious the case became, the greater the scandal for me. “I can give you no idea of my tortures. Every hour I lived I died. The death of the body has no pain compared with that I suffered while my reputation was slowly slain. My life had been a very quiet one. I had been a child lisping its prayers at its mother’s knees. I had been a young girl wrapped in the ecstasy of my first love. Suddenly I became a woman, whose soul was filled with passionate anguish; suddenly, too, I became the public scandal of the whole nation. Think what you should feel if a similar fate had overtaken your mother or sister, Mr. Eyrle.” “I would have slain the villain who wronged you!” he said. “There was no knightly hand raised in my defense; no man stood forward to defend me; few believed even in my innocence, many in my guilt. The Pelham divorce case was ended, but the consequences still remained for me. I saw myself shunned and avoided; women turned their faces slowly from me; men looked at me with an insolent leer. “When I think of it,” she cried, passionately, “of my unmerited shame, my cruel suffering, I am beside myself with rage! I am mad with the sense of my own wrongs.” Her face flew crimson, her eyes flashed, her whole figure seemed to vibrate with angry, yet righteous, wrath. Miss Hanson laid her hand on her shoulder. “Patience, my dear, patience,” she said. “Remember, it will be made clear in God’s good time.”