report was less full and less accurate than the one which she carried in
her brain and would carry to her grave. Not that the speeches mattered
now. It was no speech that had saved her; it was her own story, from her
own lips, that the lawyers would have closed! Rachel forgave them now;
she was almost grateful to them for having left it to her to save
herself in spite of them all: so should her perfect innocence be
impressed upon the whole country as on those twelve fair minds. And once
more she pored upon the hurriedly added and ill-printed line which gave
their verdict to the world, while the train stopped and started, only to
stop and start again.

"And what do you think of it, madam?"

The voice came from the opposite corner of the compartment, and Rachel
knew it for that of the gentleman who had jumped in at the last moment
at Blackfriars Bridge. It was Charing Cross that they were leaving now,
and the door had not opened at that station or the last. Rachel sat
breathless behind her evening paper. Not to answer might be to fasten
suspicion upon her widow's weeds; and, for all her right to look mankind
in the face, she shrank instinctively from immediate recognition. Then
in a clap came the temptation to discuss her own case with the owner of
a voice at once confident and courtly, and subtly reminiscent of her
native colony, where it is no affront for stranger to speak to stranger
without introduction or excuse.

Rachel's hesitation lasted perhaps a couple of seconds, and then her
paper lay across her lap.

"Of what?" she asked, with some presence of mind, for she had never an
instant's doubt that the question referred to the topic of the hour.