Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/108

 without a tremor. Trafford felt like rising and saluting the woman, as her words came clean-cut and passionless.

"Theodore Wing's mother."

"She is, then, still alive?"

"She is still alive," he said; "and unless concerned in this recent tragedy, as safe as if the knowledge of the facts had remained locked in her breast, as they were at the time of Judge Parlin's death. If she was concerned in this tragedy, then it is that, and not the fact that another has learned the truth, that destroys her safety."

Even at so serious a moment, she could not avoid playing with the subject:

"Do you think her concerned in the murder?"

"It is what I am not certain of," he said frankly. "It is the murder that has revealed this—misfortune. I can find no motive that can account for her connection with the affair."

"I am of the opinion she had nothing to do with it," she said, quite positively. "If all this is true, she would naturally have no love for the child of her mistake; but you surely cannot think on that