"Ah!" he scornfully laughed, with a quick yielding to his passion as startling as it was unexpected, "you thought you could play with me as you would; use my skill and ignore the love that prompted it. You are a clever woman, Imogene, but you went too far when you considered my forbearance unlimited." "And you forsake Craik Mansell, in the hour of his extremity?" "Craik Mansell has forsaken me." This was true; for her sake her lover had thrown his defence to the winds and rendered the assistance of his counsel unavailable. Seeing her droop her head abashed, Mr. Orcutt dryly proceeded. "I do not know what may take place in court to-morrow," said he. "It is difficult to determine what will be the outcome of so complicated a case. The District Attorney, in consideration of the deception which has been practised upon you, may refuse to prosecute any further; or, if the case goes on and the jury is called upon for a verdict, they may or may not be moved by its peculiar aspects to acquit a man of such generous dispositions. If they are, I shall do nothing to hinder an acquittal; but ask for no more active measures on my part. I cannot plead for the lover of the woman who has disgraced me." This decision, from one she had trusted so implicitly, seemed to crush her. "Ah," she murmured, "if you did not believe him guilty you would not leave him thus to his fate." He gave her a short, side-long glance, half-mocking, half-pitiful. "If," she pursued, "you had felt even a passing gleam of doubt, such as came to me when I discovered that he had never really admitted his guilt, you would let no mere mistake on the part of a woman turn you from your duty as counsellor for a man on trial for his life." His glance lost its pity and became wholly mocking. "And do _you_ cherish but passing gleams?" he sarcastically asked. She started back. "I laugh at the inconsistency of women," he cried. "You have sacrificed every thing, even risked your life for a man you really believe guilty of crime; yet if another man similarly stained asked you for your compassion only, you would fly from him as from a pestilence." But no words he could utter of this sort were able to raise any emotion in her now. "Mr. Orcutt," she demanded, "do _you_ believe Craik Mansell innocent?" His old mocking smile came back. "Have I conducted his case as if I believed him guilty?" he asked. "No, no; but you are his lawyer; you are bound not to let your real thoughts appear. But in your secret heart you did not, could not, believe he was free from a crime to which he is linked by so many criminating circumstances?" But his strange smile remaining unchanged, she seemed to waken to a sudden doubt, and leaping impetuously to his side, laid her hand on his arm and exclaimed: "Oh, sir, if you have ever cherished one hope of his innocence, no matter how faint or small, tell me of it, even if this last disclosure has convinced you of its folly!"