“Cyril should not have gone off to the other end of the world, as I hear he has done,” he continued. “He might have known that I would want to ask him much; and yet, when I come here, I find that he has been gone for more than a month, and there is positively no one in this neighbourhood who can tell me anything more of the horrible affair than has appeared in the newspapers. Fawcett, the solicitor, had kept for me the newspaper account of the inquest and the trial. I saw Fawcett last night, and then the surgeon--Crosby. We went to him after dinner. He it was who showed up the suicide theory. How could it ever be supposed that Dick would commit suicide? And yet, if it hadn't been for Crosby--Oh, it was clearly proved that he could not have shot himself; and yet if it wasn't for the possibility of his having shot himself, would they have pardoned the wretch who did the murder? I read the whole account of the trial, and Fawcett told me a good deal more. If ever a brutal murder was done by a man it was that--and yet they allowed the fellow to escape--to escape-to keep his life! That is what they call justice here! Justice! I tell you that those savages--the most degraded in existence--among whom I lived, have a better idea of justice than that.” Still she was silent. What could she say to him while he was in this mood? He had resumed his pacing of the floor. She no longer watched him. She looked out of the window. She had a strange impression that she had been present at such a scene before, and that she had taken the same impersonal interest in it all. Yes, it had been at a theatre: she had watched one of the actors pacing the stage and raving about British justice--the playwright had made the character a victim of the unjustness of the law. But the man had kept it up too long: he had exhausted the interest of the audience. They had looked about the theatre and nodded to their friends; but now she only looked out of the window. The audience had yawned: she was not so impolite. She would not interrupt the man before her by speaking a word. “What excuse did they give for letting the assassin escape?” Claude Westwood was standing once more at the window--the window through which she had watched him coming up the drive to bid her good-bye upon that October evening long ago. “Excuse? The man was found guilty of murder--the most contemptible of murders. He had not the courage to face his victim; he fired at him from behind--and yet they let him escape. But if they had only done that it would not have mattered so much. If they had given him his freedom I would have had a chance of amending the lapse of justice. But they give him his life and protection as well. Why did they not set him free and give me a chance of killing him as he killed my poor brother?” He stamped upon the floor, and struck his left palm with his right fist as he spoke.