"It is _we_ that must be grateful to you." she said, as soon as she could speak; "it is we that must be grateful to you. I cannot help suspecting, nay believing, that you are suffering in some degree on our account; but for fear we should not have time to speak fully, let me tell you, Langford, the principal object of my coming here. I was afraid that you might not have means allowed you of communicating with any of your friends, and, therefore, I was anxious to see you, to ask what can be done for you, what lawyer can be sent for to you, or what means can be taken to prove your innocence?" "My Alice has never doubted my innocence, then?" said Langford, gazing tenderly upon her. "I knew, I felt sure, she would not." "Of anything like crime, Langford," she said, "I knew you were innocent, perfectly innocent! I might imagine, indeed--for we women can hardly judge or tell to what lengths you men may think the point of honour should carry them--I might imagine, indeed, that you had taken this unhappy young man's life in honourable quarrel: but even that I did not believe." "Oh, no!" replied Langford; "I should never have dreamt of such a thing. Nothing could have provoked me to do so. Besides, Alice, did I not give you my word? and believe me, dear Alice, believe me, now and ever, that I look upon my word given to a woman as binding as my word given to a man. Nay, if it were possible, I should say more binding. because she has fewer means of enforcing its execution. No, no! dear Alice, I parted with him in the park, within ten minutes after I left you. It is true, he did try to provoke me to a quarrel, but I was not to be provoked." "I am ashamed of having doubted you, even in that, and for a moment," replied Alice; "but that doubt sprang solely from a belief that men often think it a point of honour to conceal their intentions from women in such matters as these, and believe themselves justified in using any means to do so. But now, Langford, tell me quickly, what can be done to prove you innocent? What is there that my father or myself can do to free you from a situation so painful?" "I know little," replied Langford, "that can be done under present circumstances. It is their task to prove that I am guilty, more than mine to show that I am innocent: but I hear steps upon the stairs. Who have we here, I wonder?" As he spoke, he opened the door into the other room, which Bertha had closed behind her; and nearly at the same moment, as the reader may have anticipated, the outer door at the top of the stairs was thrown open, and the Earl of Danemore, with a countenance on which hung the thunder-cloud of deep but suppressed wrath, strode in, followed closely by Sir Walter Herbert.