A less keen observer than Gastineau might have suspected that the position of Herriard and Countess Alexia was, at any rate on Herriard’s side, rapidly exceeding that of counsel and client. And it was, particularly in a man of Herriard’s temperament, scarcely to be wondered at. All through the trying stages of the case he had been brought into close and more than mere professional relations with the von Rohnburgs, while between him and the Count a friendship, founded on the secure foundation of reciprocal liking, had sprung up. Firmly and absolutely convinced as Herriard was of Alexia’s innocence, so completely, indeed, that the slander roused him to a quite unlawyer-like state of indignation, it came as a shock to find Gastineau coolly arguing upon the supposition and accepting the fact that she was guilty. Certainly, he told himself, Gastineau does not know her, has but a vague recollection of her over some four or five years back; he takes her as a mere pawn upon the legal chess-board: he has a cynical disbelief in women; it is but to be expected that he should think the worst of her; I might have realized all this, and not been such a fool as to resent his suggestion. Nevertheless, the bare idea that any one, even a dry, quibbling lawyer, could for a moment admit the possibility that this woman, whose soul shone clear and true from her eyes, whose every word carried a conviction of honesty, could have done a man to death in secret, and then have entrenched herself behind a rampart of skilfully-woven lies, was to him utterly inconceivable. True, the deed, had she really been guilty of it, would naturally have been committed under stress of great provocation. Captain Martindale’s character and want of principle where women were concerned were well known: no one would have been surprised at his finding a reprisal at the hand of those whom, as a chartered Philander, he had loved and laughed at. Natural, too, it would have been, if having been driven to that fatal stroke, she should have fought against discovery by every means in her power. For, putting aside the consequences of the deed, it would have been a fight for her honour. No; it was not the probabilities of the case, considered generally, which weighed with Herriard, but his utter inability to believe this thing of this woman. And, as his feeling for her almost insensibly grew warmer, the more preposterous did the notion appear. So when Gastineau mooted it in his cold-blooded, cynical way, it came as a shock, as a suggestion which filled Herriard with abhorrence. His whole soul recoiled from the idea, as from a monstrous impossibility.