"My landlady sat up instead. She is another of the kindest women on earth; she thought far more of me than I was ever worth, and it was she who screened me through thick and thin during the delirium that followed, and after that. She did not tell the whole truth at the trial; may there be no mercy for me hereafter if the law is not merciful to that staunch soul! She has saved my life--for this! But that night--it was her second in succession--and she had been with me the whole long day--that night she fell asleep beside me in the chair. I can hear her breathing now. "Dear soul, how it angered me at the time! It made me fret all the more for--her. Why had she broken faith? I knew that she had not. Something had kept her; had he? I had hoped he was out of the way; he left her so much. He was really on the watch, as you may know. At last I got up and went to the window. And all the windows opposite were in darkness except theirs." Langholm sprang to his feet, but sat down again as suddenly. "Go on!" "What is it that you thought, Langholm?" "I believe I know what you did. That's all." "What? Tell me, please, and then I will tell you." "All those garden walls--they connect." "Yes? Yes?" "You got through your window, climbed upon your wall, and ran along to the lights. It occurred to you suddenly; it did to me when I went over the house the other day." Severino lay looking at the imaginative man. "And yet you could suspect another after that!" "Ah, there is some mystery there also. But it is strange, indeed, to think that I was right in the beginning!" "I did not know what I was doing," resumed the young Italian, who, like many a clever foreigner, spoke more precise English than any Englishman; that, with an accent too delicate for written reproduction, alone would have betrayed him. "I still have very little recollection of what happened between my climbing out of our garden and dropping into theirs. I remember that my feet were rather cold, but that is about all. "It was near midnight, as you know, and the room it happened in--the study--had the brightest light of all. An electric lamp was blazing on the writing-table at the window, and another from a bracket among the books. The window was as wide open as it would go, the lower sash thrown right up; it was just above the scullery window, which is half underground, and has an outside grating. The sill was only the height of one's chin. I can tell you all that now, but at the time I knew very little until I was in the room itself. Thank you, I will take another sip. It does me more good than harm to tell you. But you will find it all written down." Langholm set down the glass and replenished it. The night had fallen without. The single candle in the farthest corner supplied the only light; in it the one man sat, and the other lay, their eyes locked.