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172 herself saying; “and you have proved it on behalf of one of the worst!”

It was not quite sincere; it was not quite insincere. The unconsidered words themselves were a self-revelation to Claire. She would not have unsaid them; yet to feel them less she would have given her moral and material all.

Daintree, as usual, stood to his guns regarding Erichsen, whose innocence he had lately maintained with unreasonable fervour. Culliford’s speech, he declared, had convinced him; it should have convinced the jury too, he vowed, had he been one of them. But he took with greedy eyes all the good things the girl now said to him. And in his account of final matters his conceit and his pomposity bubbled out as heretofore.

“I saw Lord John,” said he. “Lord John was obliged to see me. Our name is one he cannot afford to despise; and then he knows my position in New South Wales. I told him (in confidence) how this case had interested me, and how I had spent my money upon it. Lord John was very much impressed. I argued for innocence, and (for argument’s sake) for manslaughter too. But cold-blooded murder I said it could not be. And there is not the slightest doubt that my arguments converted Lord John.”

“You still think it may have been manslaughter?”

“You know what I think,” was the reply. “As sure as I stand here, Miss Harding, we have saved an innocent man!”

Mr. Harding was coming towards them across the spangled grass. Claire held out her hand.

“At any rate,” said she, “there is some one of whom I shall always think all the more—oh! a hundredfold the more!—for what has happened. There are two others