I was not going to ring and bring you down
again, for I had seen your face, and I still saw your light upstairs."
"So you thought I had come down to see my handiwork!"
"To see if he was really dead. Yes, I thought that afterwards. I could
not help thinking it, Rachel."
"Did it never occur to you that I might have thought he was asleep?"
"Yes, that has struck me since."
"You have not thought me guilty all along, then?"
"Not all along."
"Did you right through my trial?"
"God forgive me--yes, I did! And there was one thing that convinced me
more than anything else; that was when you told the jury that the
occasion of your final parting upstairs was the last time you saw poor
Alec alive."
"But it was," said Rachel. "I remember the question. I did not know how
to answer it. I could not tell them I had seen him dead but fancied him
only asleep; that they would never have believed. So I told the simple
truth. But it upset me dreadfully."
"That I saw. You expected cross-examination."
"Yes; and I did not know whether to stick to the truth or to lie!"
"I can read people sometimes," Steel continued after a pause.
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