"Rachel," he said at length, in a tone as new as his reluctance, "I am going to answer the question which you have so often asked me. I am going to answer it with perfect honesty, and very possibly you will never speak to me again. I shall be sorry for both our sakes if you do anything precipitate, but in any case you shall act as you think best. You know that I was exceedingly fond of Alec Minchin as a young man; now, I am not often exceedingly fond of anybody, as you may also know by this time. Before your trial I was convinced that you had killed my old friend, whom I was so keen to see again that I came up to town by the very first train after getting his letter. You had robbed me of the only friend I had in England at the very moment when he needed me and I was on my way to him. I could have saved his ship, and you had sent both him and it to the bottom! That, I say candidly, was what I thought." "I don't blame you for thinking it before the trial," said Rachel. "It seems to have been the universal opinion." "I formed mine for myself, and I had a particular reason for forming it," continued Steel, with a marked vibration in his usually unemotional voice. "I don't know which to tell you first.... Well, it shall be that reason. On the night of the murder do you remember coming downstairs and going or rather looking into the study--at one o'clock in the morning?" Rachel recoiled in her chair. "Heavens!" she cried. "How can you know that?" "Did you hear nothing as you went upstairs again?" "I don't remember." "Not a rattle at the letter-box?" "Yes! Yes! Now I do remember. And it was actually you!" "It was, indeed," said Steel, gravely. "I saw you come down, I saw you peep in--all dread and reluctance! I saw you recoil, I saw the face with which you shut those doors and put out the lights. And afterwards I learned from the medical evidence that your husband must have been dead at that time; one thing I knew, and that was that he was not shot during the next hour and more, for I waited about until half-past two in the hope that he would come out. I was not going to ring and bring you down again, for I had seen your face, and I still saw your light upstairs." "So you thought I had come down to see my handiwork!" "To see if he was really dead. Yes, I thought that afterwards. I could not help thinking it, Rachel." "Did it never occur to you that I might have thought he was asleep?" "Yes, that has struck me since." "You have not thought me guilty all along, then?" "Not all along." "Did you right through my trial?" "God forgive me--yes, I did! And there was one thing that convinced me more than anything else; that was when you told the jury that the occasion of your final parting upstairs was the last time you saw poor Alec alive."