And the first thing she saw was that the
window was broken still.
Rachel looked at it more closely than she had done on the morning when
she had given her incriminating opinion to the police, and the longer
she looked the less reason did she see to alter that opinion. The broken
glass might have been placed upon the sill in order to promote the very
theory which had been so gullibly adopted by the police, and the watch
and chain hidden in the chimney for the same purpose. They might have
hanged the man who kept them; and surely this was not the first thief
who had slunk away empty-handed after the committal of a crime
infinitely greater than the one contemplated.
Rachel had never wavered in these ideas, but neither had she dwelt on
them to any extent, and now they came one instant only to go the next.
Her husband was dead--that was once more the paramount thought--and she
his widow had been acquitted on a charge of murdering him. But for the
moment she was thinking only of him, and her eyes hung over the spot
where she had seen him sitting dead--once without dreaming it--and soon
they filled. Perhaps she was remembering all that had been good in him,
perhaps all that had been evil in herself; her lips quivered, and her
eyes filled.
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