What passed then, when alone in her room she crouched before her terror, it is neither profitable nor decent to say. She had been strong up to a certain point--the goal to whose attainment she had set the marvellous mechanism of nerves and fibres. It was of her sex not to have calculated upon the beyond. She paid her sex’s penalty. The inevitable law of inconsistency dragged her out, a wild, half-mad thing, an hour later into the street. A hansom cab chanced to have just put down a fare at the next house. She entered, flung an address at the driver, and a moment later was being carried through whirling space. ***** The first day of Hugh’s trial was over. The streets rang with it. Reports were flashing through the kingdom on a thousand wires. It was the theme of all men’s talk. A _cause célébré_ convulsing a vast society. The attorney-general had delivered his opening address. One or two witnesses had been called; Minna Hart the last. The prisoner’s prospects were damnably black. His friends regarded each other with pale lips. In the quiet Hertfordshire townlet two gentle ladies clung together in awful anguish of soul. The man himself lay in Holloway Gaol mailed in a pride of steel. Irene and Gerard sat over their evening meal. She had been in court all the gnawing day, and now, leaning back in her chair, dressed in a pink wrapper, a pretty coquetry of happier times, she looked almost diaphanous in her exhaustion. “It is no use your not eating,” said Gerard, “you’ll make yourself ill.” She shook her head. “I can’t, Gerard. I’ll have some beef tea or something presently. You go on. You are a man and have a big body to nourish.” She helped him from the dish in front of her, choosing, in her wifely fashion, the nicest-looking morsels, and then sat regarding him with her great eyes, admiring the strength of will that could compel appetite on so sorrowful an evening. She knew that rejection of food was silly. But the thought of it turned her sick. “I feel ill,” she said. “I always prided myself on being strong-minded and above affected, feminine weaknesses. But now--” she shrugged her shoulders and her lips moved in a wan smile. “You had better not come to the court to-morrow, if you don’t feel up to it,” said Gerard. “Oh, I should go if I were dying!” said Irene. “It is the least thing we can do--go and cheer and keep the brave heart in him. For with all your efforts, dearest, you have been able to do nothing.” “There was nothing to be done. I did what I could. Couldn’t even get hold of your famous photograph. He must have destroyed that too. So I couldn’t trace the original.”