"That would set him free," the voices in her heart insisted. "Who has been setting you to ask about that, eh?" She did not reply. "You did not keep faith with me," he cried angrily. "You have been telling Sir Gordon, or that Bayle." "I told no one," she said hoarsely. "Hah!" he ejaculated with a sigh of relief. "Stephen Crellock has told Julia what she--and I--declare is false." "Stephen Crellock is a fool," he cried quickly. "Go and fetch Julia here. She must be talked to." "Robert! my husband," cried Mrs Hallam, throwing herself upon her knees and catching his hands, "you do not speak out. Why do you not passionately say it is false? How dare he accuse you of such a crime! You do not speak!" She gazed up at him wildly. "What do you want me to say?" he cried angrily. "Do you think me mad, woman? Here, let's have an end of all this nonsense. What does Crellock say?" She could not speak for a few minutes, so overladen was her heart; and when she did, the words were hoarse that fell upon his ears. "He said--he told our simple, loving girl, whom I have taught to trust in and reverence her martyred father's name; whose faith has been in your innocency of the crime for which you were sent here--the girl I taught to pray that your innocence might be proved--" "Will you go on?" he cried brutally. "I'm sick of this. Now, what did he say?" "That--Oh, Robert, my husband, I cannot say it! His words cannot be true!" "Will you speak?" he cried. "Out with it at once! When will you grow to be a woman of the world, and stop this childishness? Now what did the chattering fool say?" "That the box I brought over contained the proceeds of the bank robbery--money that you had hidden away." Millicent Hallam started up and gazed about her with a dazed look, as if she were startled by the words she heard--words that seemed to have come from other lips than hers; and then she pressed her hands to her heaving bosom as her husband spoke. "Stephen Crellock must be getting tired of his leave," he said coolly. "An idiot! He had better have kept his tongue between his teeth. How came he to be chattering about that? If he don't mind--" He did not finish the sentence, and his wife's eyes dilated as she gazed at him in a horrified way. "You do not deny it!" she said at last. "You do not declare that this is all cruelly false!" "No," he said slowly, "I am not going to worry myself about his words. He can't prove anything." "But it is a charge against your honour," she cried; "against me. Robert! you will not let this go uncontradicted for an hour longer?" "Stephen Crellock had better mind," said Hallam, slowly and thoughtfully, as if he had not heard his wife. "But, Robert--my husband! you will speak for your own sake--for your child's sake--for mine?" There was a growing intensity in the words, whose tones rose to one of passionate appeal.