Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/109

 account that she was guilty of murder—the cruelest murder one could imagine under the circumstances! Certainly, if there was anything to tempt to murder, anything that would have advantaged her, it passed long ago."

"I have thought of that," he said, "but is it not possible that something may have occurred recently that alarmed her—something that made her feel it necessary to go to extremes to which, naturally, she would be unwilling to resort, excepting under the direst necessity?"

"I do not think," she said, lifting her head with some imperiousness, "that such a woman is likely to be alarmed. She would have lived that down long since. More than that, she would have brains enough to see that a crime, more than all else, would endanger her secret. This woman could not have been brainless."

"Far from it," he assured her. "I am inclined to rate her as the ablest woman I have ever met."

She bowed as recognising a personal compliment.

"You have met her, then?"

"Yes," he said. "I have met her."