The day passed as days full of agitation pass--looking long, protracted, endless--blank hours of suspense following the moment of excitement. Sir James Montgomery had gone away shaking his good grey head. He had not believed John Erskine's story--that is, he believed that there was something suppressed. He had listened with the profoundest interest up to a certain point, but after that he had shaken his head. "You would have done better to tell me everything," he said, as he went away. "It would have been more wise--more wise." He shook his head; the very truth of the story went against it. There was so much that fitted into the hypothesis of the country-side. But then there came that _suppressio veri_ which took all the value from the statement. Sir James went away fully determined to repeat the story in the most favourable way--to give the best representation of it possible; but he was not satisfied. It was with a most serious face that he mounted his horse and rode away, shaking his head from time to time. "No, no," he said to himself, "that will never hold water--that will never hold water!" When this interview was over, John went back to his library and sat down in his usual chair with a sense of exhaustion and hopelessness which it would be difficult to describe. He had told his story as best he could, searching his memory for every detail; but he had not been believed. He had gone on, growing impassioned in his self-defence--growing indignant, feeling himself powerless in face of that blank wall of incredulity, that steady incapacity to believe. "Why should I tell you a lie?" he cried, at last. "Do not you see? Have you not said that it was for my interest to tell you the truth?" "I am not saying you have told a lie," Sir James said, always shaking his head. "No, no--no lie. You will never be accused of that." When he went away, he had laid his heavy old hand on John's shoulder. "My poor lad, if you had only had the courage to open your heart all the way!" he said. John felt like a victim in the hands of the Inquisition. What did they want him to confess? Half maddened, he felt as if a little more pressure, a few more twists of the screw, would make him accuse himself of anything, and confess all that they might require. He did not know how long he sat there, silent, doing nothing, not even thinking anything, alone with himself and the cloud that hung over his life, with a consciousness that all his movements were watched, that even this would be something against him, a proof of that remorse which belongs to guilt. And thus the slow moments, every one slower than the other, more full of oppression, rolled over him. Beaufort had disappeared, and did not return till late in the afternoon, when the twilight was falling. A few words only passed between them, and these related solely to Beaufort's thoughts, not to Erskine's. "It is _her_ husband who has been killed," Beaufort said; "you never told me."