The prosecution professed great respect for Miss Waldron, whose misfortunes were well known, but of what value was her testimony in this case? She had not even seen Jenkins for a long time; circumstances warped the best of natures. The end was, that Jenkins was committed for trial at the assizes within two months. Thus did circumstances again involve this victim of fate in an iron net. Here again I must anticipate. Jenkins was sentenced at the assizes to twelve months imprisonment with hard labour. Nevertheless the imputation against Albert Herring was never quite forgotten; to this day the poor believe it, and even the police shake their heads. At all events he profited largely by it. The corn had been kept in the hope that the markets would rise, but they had fallen. The insurance-money saved him from irretrievable ruin. The prisoner’s poor wife was reduced to utter beggary. Violet did her best to keep her, but she could not pay the debts the gardener, with his miserable pay, had of necessity contracted. Ten pounds still remained unpaid. At last the poor woman bethought her of an ancient treasure, an old bible;—would Miss Violet buy it? It really was Violet’s—it had been lent by Violet’s grandmother to the poor woman, and never returned. Violet at once remembered Lady Lechester’s fancy for such books, and recommended her to take it to The Towers. The woman went, and returned with the money. Now, the immediate effect upon our history of this fire was that Violet Waldron became a prominent name in the local paper published at Barnham, and that local paper had been taken for years regularly at The Towers. And at The Towers at that time Theodore Marese was temporarily staying, under circumstances that will shortly appear. Chapter Eight. When Lady Lechester returned from her drive and learnt with intense surprise that Violet was gone, her first thought was that she had been hurt by the remarks made upon Aymer’s hallucination the previous evening. Agnes reproached herself for her momentary irritation; but when she found a note for her from Violet on her dressing-table, and had read both it and the enclosed letter from Aymer, her anger was thoroughly aroused. Not unnaturally she took it in the worst sense, and looked upon it as a downright insult. To pretend that a gentlemen of Marese’s position and character was not the heir that he affirmed himself to be—that he had wooed her under false pretences—that was bad taste enough, and utterly unjustifiable. Still, it might have passed as the hallucination of an over-tasked mind. But to deliberately accuse the same gentleman of the blackest crime it was possible for human beings to commit, was inexcusable.