"You mean something more than this inquest?"--in the same tone, but a little more deliberately. "Yes. This is only an inquiry into the place, time, and cause of death. No one is on trial for a crime as yet." "You mean"--without any variation in accent--"that some one will be tried for the murder of my late husband?" He was silent. She put her next question in a perfectly cold and steady manner: "You mean that I will be tried for the murder of my late husband?" "Great heavens--no!" he cried, throwing himself forward with a violent start. "Who put such a monstrous thought into your head?" Although the thought had frequently occurred to him, from her lips, and now, it came to him with a powerful shock. "You." "I--I put such a thought into your head! Mrs. Davenport, you cannot mean what you say? It is too dreadful!" "I will not say you ever put the thought in as precise words as I have used; but at our first meeting it was in your mind, and at our first meeting it entered my mind that you considered it at all events possible that I might be tried for the murder of my husband. You need not be afraid of shocking me. Nothing can shock me now. What is the important fact you are keeping back? I wish to know it at once." "Mr. Blake has been arrested this evening. He was arrested as he left the 'Wolfdog Inn.'" "Is that all?" "All! Why, it is a matter of life and death with him, as things now look. He must have been mad to give the evidence he did to-day." "And when am I to be arrested? Or perhaps I am already arrested, and the driver is a policeman?" "No, no. Nor is there, as far as I can see, a likelihood of anything so horrible taking place." "Neither the trial nor the scaffold would have the least horror for me now, I shall be ready for my death when they are ready for it. This is my place--for the present, at all events." They had arrived in Jermyn Street, and she alighted. CHAPTER XVI. THE VERDICT. It was a strange room, large and bright and fresh. The air of it was cool without being cold. After all, was it a strange room? Had he not seen it, or something like it, before! But perhaps it was in a dream he had seen that other room. A dream? Much of what had been resembled a dream. Did not all the past look like a dream? How was one to know whether the past had been dream or reality? He could not say. At all events, he was too tired to decide any difficult question. He would go to sleep now--at least he would shut his eyes. That bright, cold glitter of winter sunlight pained his eyes. If before falling asleep, and while his eyes were thus closed and his body at rest, he could get a drink of cool, sweet water, how deliciously refreshing it would be! How hot he was! It wasn't an agreeable kind of heat, but a dull, dead, smouldering heat that parched his skin, his tongue, his bones, his marrow. Why, it was hotter than it had been last night on the road!