"I'm coming to it, if you'll have a second's patience. Yesterday morning, early, he went into Newcaster, and there he learnt not only that Mr Emmett had fallen from the table to the floor--in fact, and not in my imagination only--but also that it was the fall which had actually killed him, and not your blow at all." "How came Strathmoira to discuss the subject with you?" "He knew all; and I told him everything." "Wasn't that rather a risky thing to do?" "I didn't tell him anything till he had found out for himself all that I had to tell. Besides, are you hinting that he might have betrayed me? You say you know something of him; you can't know much! So far from betraying me he nearly got himself into the most frightful trouble through trying to keep me what he thought safe. I don't know what he wouldn't have done rather than let any what he would have called harm come to me. It frightens me when I think of it now." "Lucky man!" "I don't know why you say that. It seems to me that he was very unlucky ever to have come across me--I bring ill-luck to everyone! It is I who am lucky altogether beyond anything I deserve. However, I didn't mean to discuss Mr Frazer--I mean the Earl of Strathmoira--it seems such an extraordinary thing that an actual earl should have done all that he did for me." "It does!" "Yes, it does! I don't know what you mean, but it is an extraordinary thing! You can laugh at me." "But I wasn't!" "You were very nearly--however, I don't care. I was about to say that the point is that you can see for yourself that, since it was the fall from the table which was the cause of Mr Emmett's death, it's quite plain that, as I said, you didn't kill him." "Miss Gilbert, you would make an excellent lawyer." "You are laughing at me again. Pray why now?" "I assure you that I am not doing so in any opprobrious sense. Only, while I quite see your point, it seems to me that it's one rather for lawyers than for a plain man." "Why? It is a plain statement of a plain fact!" "Still, the fact remains--doesn't it?--that if it had not been for the blow I struck him he would not have died?" "It doesn't follow; if they hadn't put him on the table he might have been alive now." "Who might have been alive now? Excuse me if I startle you; but you were so interested in each other's conversation that, in the din of this orchestral display with which the elements are favouring us, my modest knocking went unnoticed. I knocked even twice; then, as I was a little damp, I thought it possible that you might forgive me if I came in out of the wet."