When at last she became convinced that this was so, she experienced an overpowering revulsion of feeling. For an hour or more her whole soul had been sickened with the contemplation of a dastardly crime and the callous effrontery of the criminal. Now she was forced to believe that she had done him a great wrong; it was certain now that he had not replaced the statuette, it was probable he had never laid hands on it at all. She was hurled in this terrible see-saw of doubt back on the story she had just heard from Celia. John and his father had been left facing each other in the hall in deepest anger. Had John after all done this? Her mind, leaping to the question, instantly conceived how it might have been—she pictured Sir Roger suddenly altering his mind about Celia’s departure, John on an impulse running upstairs to fetch her back, then the thought of the strange weapon at his elbow and the fierce flinging of it down. And then, perhaps, Philip had found him in remorse beside his father’s body, had decided to shield him and had let him out after John had replaced the weapon. And she had just told Celia John was guiltless and she could prove it—that to her was the most poignant tragedy of this surprise. She felt estranged from Philip for ever, whatever part he had played, and, if it had to lie between him and John, she longed only to be able to say it was not John. In acute agony she returned to Philip’s room, not greatly caring now whether she ran into him or not, replaced the shoe and almost automatically took up the pattern which in her bewilderment she had left lying on his dressing table. She turned out of the room with a strange feeling of apathy, saw she held the pattern in her hand, and, with an unreasoning resentment, tore it to pieces. She had hardly done so before she regretted the action: at least she might make as certain of John as she had tried to do of Philip. She went into John’s room and, seeing an odd boot at the end of the row, took it up. It was a left one and she was puzzled to know what could have become of its fellow. It had been there, she was sure, when she had looked in and found Humblethorne the day before. However, that mattered little beside the purpose for which she had come.