Relief and dread fought a bitter battle in her. For the first time since he had come into her thoughts to overshadow them with fear, she felt it possible to acquit John not only of murder but of causing his father’s death at all; the thought of him had been bound up with the box and now she knew the box had shed no blood. But the instant she had yielded herself up to the relief of this her reason became weighed with a greater sense of evil still. The box had missed, but none the less Sir Roger had been struck down. In spite of all her reborn belief she could not repress the thought that this might have been by the hand either of John or of Philip. Philip and John might both have attacked Sir Roger; more odious still, Philip might have killed him after John had left, believing that it would not be difficult to shift the guilt onto one who had secretly entered the house he was forbidden. She felt sick as these possibilities forced their way in on her. No longer could she even comfort herself by believing in the thought of accident. And after the deed was done, what then? If they had acted together, Philip had let John out and broken the little window. Then, back at the body, he had had a spasm of fear and put the box where it had been found—that at least would throw suspicion away from him. If he had done it after he had let John out, striking perhaps on an impulse without thinking it out in all its traces afterwards, the moving of the box argued just the same a fell and deadly motive. Then he had gone back to his study—she saw the whole thing—written those letters rapidly and then returned to make a show of finding the body and to act a long-drawn lie. Wildly she wracked her brain for one detail which could disprove these fearful imaginings. “A pair of evening shoes”—the words she had heard Humblethorne use in his talk with Birts the previous evening, words then without special significance, came instead with swift insistence into her mind. They wanted a pair of Philip’s shoes; she had heard them say so. Why? Instantly thought answered itself as she remembered the rest of the stains so close to her. She stooped, and lifting the edge of the sheet, looked again at the two faint, oblong stains, one on the second and one on the fourth step. “He went upstairs after the murder,” came the flashing conclusion—“to act his lie first to me,” she added with a horror-stricken repulsion. So violent was this that she struggled with all her might against it: this seemed to her the most shocking part of the whole dreadful business, “To me, with wet blood on his shoes—impossible! He must have had some other reason; it must have been before that,” she found herself saying. She dropped the sheet she had been clutching with unconscious fierceness, and white and cold, with her mouth set in a fierce, hard line, examined the stairs above, and then the landing, and then the second flight of stairs.