"Why? why? You have plenty of evidence against me. I have placed myself in your hands by confessing about the carving-knife. Why do you not denounce me as guilty?" "How can you ask?" cried Ellis, carried out of his usual equable self by her vehemence. "Don't you know--can't you see--I love you! I love you! that is why I believe you guiltless." CHAPTER VI A FRESH DISCOVERY In placing herself in the dock, so to speak, Mrs. Moxton had been defiant, loud-voiced and reckless, daring Ellis to denounce her for a crime of which she knew herself innocent. His refusal, and the cause he gave for such refusal, took her by surprise. Long since she had guessed that the doctor loved her, but she did not count on his proclaiming the fact so soon. Nor would he have done so had he not been thrown off his guard by her appeal. But her demand and his answer to it produced on both sides a stupefied calm. Ellis, frightened at his own boldness, remained silent after uttering the fatal words; Mrs. Moxton, on the other hand, felt her wrath die away in sheer surprise. Then her cheeks flushed from an unexplained emotion, and a light beamed from her eyes. "You love me!" she murmured softly, and looked at Ellis. Something in her regard, her tone, in her whole attitude, seemed to melt the frozen silence of the man. He sprang forward and touched her hand. "You are not angry?" he asked, with eagerness. The touch recalled Mrs. Moxton to a sense of what she owed to herself, and woke in her a feeling of wrath at the audacity of the man, who could speak the word to a woman lately widowed in so terrible a manner. "How dare you!" she cried angrily, retreating. "What must you think of me to talk like that!" "I think the world of you," replied Ellis, doggedly. "I have said the truth." "You deceive yourself. What you take for the truth is fantasy. You cannot love one whom you have known only three weeks." "Love can be born of a glance." "In romances, I grant, but not in real life." She paused and burst out laughing. "Oh, it is too absurd." Ellis was piqued. "I fail to see the absurdity. I speak as I feel." For the moment Mrs. Moxton appeared to meditate an answer to this plain statement. Suddenly she bit her lip, drew back and shook her head. "You speak folly. You think madness," she said. "Consider! I am a three weeks' widow. My husband died by violence, and his death is not avenged. My name is smirched. My--no! This is no time for such talk. Let us forget the words you have uttered." "I cannot forget." "Then I must lose my friend," said Mrs. Moxton, determinedly. "I really cannot meet you on these terms. I am a newly-made widow, not a possible wife for you." "But in the future?" "Let the future look after itself," she cried petulantly. "What we have to do, is to attend to the present. You wish to help me. Do so by leaving this crime to be punished by Heaven." "But your smirched name?"