Unspeakable terror laid its paralysing grasp upon Harriet; upon her heart, which ceased, it seemed to her, to beat; upon her limbs, which refused to obey the impulse of her will. Alone she stood upon the platform, long after the train had disappeared, and thought failed her with the power of movement; a blank fell upon her. A porter addressed her, but she stared stupidly in his face, and made no reply.  
"The lady's ill," the man said to another; "I had better take her to the waiting-room, and fetch a cab. If you'll come this way, ma'am--"
 
Then Harriet's faculties awoke with a start. "No, thank you," she said; "I must get home." And she walked swiftly and steadily away. Two of the superior officials were talking together close to the door through which she had to pass, and she heard one of them say:
 
"Very quietly done, if it was so; and I'm pretty sure it was; I couldn't be mistaken in Tatlow."
 
The words conveyed no meaning, no alarm to Harriet. She went on, and out into the crowded street. She walked a long way before she felt that she could bear the restraint, the sitting still implied by driving in any vehicle. But when she reached Tokenhouse-yard, and found that nothing was known there of Routh, that no message had been received from him since he had left that evening, she got into a cab and went home. No news there, no message, no letter. Nothing for her to do but wait, to wait as patiently as she could, while the servants speculated upon the queer state of affairs, commented upon "master's" absence on the preceding night, and hoped he had not "bolted"--a proceeding which they understood was not uncommon in the case of gentlemen of Routh's anomalous and dim profession. Nothing for her to do but to wait, nothing but the hardest of all tasks, the most agonizing of all sufferings. And this was the night which was to have brought her, with utter despair for herself, rest. Rest of body, which she had never so sorely needed, and had never felt so impossible of attainment. Her iron strength and endurance were gone now. Her whole frame ached, her nerves thrilled like the strings of a musical instrument, a terrible interior distraction and hurry came over her at intervals, and seemed to sweep away her consciousness of reality without deadening her sense of suffering. She did not now wonder whether she was going mad; since she had known the very, very worst of her own fate, that fear had entirely left her. She wondered now whether she was dying. Wondered, with some curiosity, but no fear; wondered, with a vague feeling of the strangeness of the irruption of utter nothingness into such a chaos of suffering and dread as life had become to her. There would be rest, but not the consciousness of it; she would no more exist. A little while ago she would have shrunk from that, because love remained to her; but now--If she could but know the worst, know the truth, know that he could not be saved, or that he was safe, she would not care how soon she ceased to be one of the facts of the universe. She had never mattered much; she did not much matter now. But these thoughts crossed her mind vaguely and rarely; for the most part it was abandoned to the tumultuous agony of her ignorance and suspense. Still no letter, no message. The time wore on, and it was nine o'clock when Harriet heard a ring at the door, and a man's voice asking to see Mrs. Routh. It was not a voice she knew; and even while she eagerly hoped the man might have come to her from Routh, she trembled at the thought that he might be the bearer of a communication from. George Dallas, for whose silence she had been thankful, but unable to account.
 
The man was a clerk from Mr. Lowther's office, and his errand was to deliver to Mrs. Routh a letter, "on very important business," he said, which he had directions to give into her own hands. He executed his commission, retired promptly, and Harriet was left alone to find the solution of all her doubts, the termination of all her suspense, in Jim Swain's letter.
 
The approaches to the Mansion House police-court, and the precincts of the court itself, were densely crowded. All sorts of rumours prevailed respecting the reported discovery of the mystery which had perplexed the police and the public in the spring. The arrest of two persons at different places, and the reports, garbled, exaggerated, and distorted as they were, of the circumstances which had led to the discovery which directed suspicion towards the second of the two accused persons had keenly excited the public curiosity. The proceedings of the coroner's inquest upon the body of the unknown man had been raked up and read with avidity; and the oozing out of even the smallest particulars relative to the two prisoners was eagerly watched for by the greedy crowd. Curiosity and expectation were obliged to satisfy themselves for the nonce with the proceedings in the case of Stewart Routh. George Dallas was unable to appear; since the previous day his illness had materially increased, and the official medical report pronounced it to be brain fever. Unconscious of the tremendous danger in which he stood, oblivious even of the frightful discovery which had struck him so heavy a blow, George Dallas lay, under suspicion of a dreadful crime, in prison-ward, and under prison watch and care. So attention and curiosity centred themselves in Stewart Routh, and the wildest stories were propagated, the wildest conjectures ran riot.
 
The prisoner had been brought up, with the customary formalities, at an early hour, and the examination, which was likely to last some time, had begun, when Mr. Felton, who was in the court with Mr. Carruthers, pressed that gentleman's arm, and whispered: "Look there! To the left, just under the window. Do you see her?"
 
"I see a woman--yes," replied Mr. Carruthers.
 
"His wife!" said Mr. Felton, in a tone of compassionate amazement. It was his wife. Thus Routh and Harriet found themselves face to face again. As the prisoner's eye, shifting restlessly around him, seeing curious faces, full of avidity, but not one ray of compassion, fell upon her, every trace of colour faded out of his cheek, and he drew one deep, gasping breath. Had she betrayed him? He should soon know; the story about to be told would soon enlighten him. Did he really think she had done so? Did he really believe it for one minute? No. He had tried, in the blind fury of his rage, when he found himself trapped, balked, hopelessly in the power of the law, and the game utterly up--when, in the loneliness of the night, he had brooded savagely over the hopes he had entertained, over the dazzling pictures his fancy had painted, then he had tried to accuse her, he had hated and execrated her, and tried to accuse her. But in vain; he was not a fool, villain as he was, and his common sense forbade the success of the attempt. And now, when he saw her, her from whom he had last parted with a cruel blow, and a word that was more cruel, it was as though all his past life looked out at him through her woful blue eyes. Awfully it looked at him, and held him fascinated, even to a brief oblivion of the scene around him. She had raised her veil, not quite off her face, but so that he could see her distinctly, and when he looked at her, her lips parted, in a vain heroic attempt to smile. But they only quivered and closed again, and she knew it, and drew the veil closely round her face, and sat thenceforth, her head falling forward upon her breast, her figure quite motionless.
 
The ordinary business of the place and the occasion went on, intensified in interest to the spectators by the presence of the murdered man's father, in the sensational character of a witness. Harriet's relation to the prisoner was not divined by the public, and so she passed unnoticed.
 
Jim Swain was, of course, the chief witness, and he told his story with clearness and directness, though he was evidently and deeply affected by the sight of Harriet, whom his quick eye instantly recognized. She took no notice; she did not change her position, or raise her veil as the examination of the boy proceeded, as minute by minute she heard and felt the last chance, the last faint hope of escape, slip away, and the terrible certainty of doom become clearer and more imminent. She heard and saw the boy whose story contained the destruction of hope and life, showed her the utter futility of all the plans they had concocted, of all the precautions they had taken; showed her that while they had fenced themselves from the danger without, the unsuspected ruin was close beside them, always near, wholly unmoved. It had come, it had happened; all was over, it did not matter how. There was no room for anger, no power of surprise or curiosity left in her mind. As the golden locket was produced, and the identity of the portrait with that of the murdered man was sworn to, a kind of vision came to her. She saw the bright spring morning once more, and the lonely bridge; she saw the river with the early sunlight upon it; she saw herself leaning over the parapet and looking into the water, as the parcel she had carried thither with careful haste sank into the depth and was hidden. She saw herself returning homeward, the dangerous link in the evidence destroyed, passing by the archway, where a boy lay, whom she had pitied, even then, in her own great and terrible anguish. If anything could be strange now, it would be strange to remember what he then had in his possession, to render all her precaution vain. But she could not feel it so, or think about it; all things were alike to her henceforth, there was no strangeness or familiarity in them for evermore. Occasionally, for a minute, the place she was in seemed to grow unreal to her, and to fade; the next, she took up the full sense of the words which were being spoken, and every face in the crowd, every detail of the building, every accident of the scene, seemed to strike upon her brain through her eyes. She never looked at Jim, but she saw him distinctly; she saw also the look with which Routh regarded him.
 
That look was murderous. As the boy's story made his motives evident, as it exposed the fallacious nature of the security on which Routh had built, as it made him see how true had been Harriet's prevision, how wise her counsel--though he hated her all the more bitterly as the knowledge grew more and more irresistible--the murderous impulse rose to fury within him. Standing there a prisoner, helpless, and certain of condemnation, for he never had a doubt of that, the chain he had helped to forge by his counsel to Dallas was too strong to be broken; he would have taken two more lives if he had had the power and the chance--the boy's, and that accursed woman's. Not his wife's, not Harriet's; he knew now, he saw now, she had not brought him to this. But the other, the other who had tempted him and lured him; who had defeated him, ruined him, and escaped. He knew her shallow character and her cold heart, and his fierce, vindictive, passionate, sensual nature was stirred by horrid pangs of fury and powerless hate as he thought of her--of the triumphant beauty which he had so coveted, of the wealth he had so nearly clutched--triumphant, and happy, and powerful still, while he--he! Already the bitterness and blackness of death were upon him.
 
And the boy! So powerful, even now, was the egotism of the man's nature, that he winced under the pain of the defeat the boy had inflicted upon him--winced under the defeat while he trembled at the destruction. He had kept him near him, under his hand, that if the need should arise he might use him as an instrument for the ruin of George Dallas, and so had provided for his own ruin. The active hate and persistent plan of another could not have worked more surely against him than he had himself wrought, and the sense of the boy's instrumentality became unbearably degrading to him, wounding him where he was most vulnerable.
 
Thus all black and evil passions raged in his heart; and as his wife looked in his face, she read them there as in a printed book, and once again the feeling of last night came over her, of the strangeness of a sudden cessation to all this, and also something like a dreary satisfaction in the knowledge that it was within her power and his to bid it all cease--to have done with it.
 
Looking at him, and thinking this, if the strange dream of her mind may be called thought, the curiosity of the crowd began to anger her a little. What was the dead man to them, the nameless stranger, that they should care for the discovery--that they should come here to see the agony of another man, destined, like the first, to die? The popular instinct filled her with loathing, but only momentarily; she forgot to think of it the next minute, and the vagueness came again, the film and the dimness, and again the acute distinctness of sound, the intensity of vision.
 
It was over at length. The prisoner was committed for trial. As he was removed with the celerity usual on such occasions, Harriet made a slight sign to the solicitor acting for Routh--a sign evidently preconcerted, for he approached the magistrate, and addressed him in a low voice. The reply was favourable to his request, and he, in his turn, signed to Harriet, who left her place and came to where he was standing. He placed her in the box, and she stood there firmly, having bowed to the magistrate, who addressed her:
 
"You are the prisoner's wife?"
 
"I am."
 
"You wish to speak to me?"
 
"I wish to ask your permission to see my husband before he is removed."
 
"You may do so. Take care of the lady."
 
This to one of the officials. The tone of the magistrate's reply to Harriet was compassionate, though he spoke briefly; and he looked intently at her as she bowed again and turned meekly away. He has sai............