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232 remained with them. Mr. Aram also remained, giving them sundry little instructions in a low voice as to the manner in which they should go home and return the next morning,—telling them the hour at which they must start, and promising that he would meet them at the door of the court. To all this Mrs. Orme endeavoured to give her best attention, as though it were of the last importance; but Lady Mason was apparently much the more collected of the two, and seemed to take all Mr. Aram's courtesies as though they were a matter of course. There she sat, still with her veil up, and though all those who had been assembled there during the day turned their eyes upon her as they passed out, she bore it all without quailing. It was not that she returned their gaze, or affected an effrontery in her conduct; but she was able to endure it without showing that she suffered as she did so.

'The carriage is there now,' said Mr. Aram, who had left the court for a minute; 'and I think you may get into it quietly.' This accordingly they did, making their way through an avenue of idlers who still remained that they might look upon the lady who was accused of having forged her husband's will.

'I will stay with her to-night,' whispered Mrs. Orme to her son as they passed through the court.

'Do you mean that you will not come to The Cleeve at all?'

'Not to-night; not till the trial be over. Do you remain with your grandfather.'

'I shall be here to-morrow of course to see how you go on.'

'But do not leave your grandfather this evening. Give him my love, and say that I think it best that I should remain at Orley Farm till the trial be over. And, Peregrine, if I were you I would not talk to him much about the trial.'

'But why not?'

'I will tell you when it is over. But it would only harass him at the present moment.' And then Peregrine handed his mother into the carriage and took his own way back to The Cleeve.

As he returned he was bewildered in his mind by what he had heard, and he also began to feel something like a doubt as to Lady Mason's innocence. Hitherto his belief in it had been as fixed and assured as that of her own son. Indeed it had never occurred to him as possible that she could have done the thing with which she was charged. He had hated Joseph Mason for suspecting her, and had hated Dockwrath for his presumed falsehood in pretending to suspect her. But what was he to think of this question now, after hearing the clear and dispassionate statement of all the circumstances by the solicitor-general? Hitherto he had understood none of the particulars of the case; but now the nature of the accusation had been made plain, and it was evident to him that at any rate that far-sighted lawyer believed in the truth of his own state-