to-day? Keep up your courage, and be brave. It is only for a very short
time. I have retained the noted criminal lawyers, Benham and Brown, for
the defence. You could not possibly have better men."

At the word "criminal" Mrs. Brenton shuddered.

"Alice," continued Roland, sitting down near her, and drawing his chair
closer to her, "tell me that you will not lose your courage. I want you
to be brave, for the sake of your friends."

He took her listless hand in his own, and she did not withdraw it.

Brenton felt passing over him the pangs of impotent rage, as he saw this
act on the part of Roland.

Roland had been an unsuccessful suitor for the hand which he now held
in his own, and Brenton thought it the worst possible taste, to say the
least, that he should take advantage now of her terrible situation to
ingratiate himself into her favour.

The nearest approach to a quarrel that Brenton and his wife had had
during their short six months of wedded life was on the subject of the
man who now held her hand in his own. It made Brenton impatient to think
that a woman with all her boasted insight into character, her instincts
as to what was right and what was wrong, had such little real intuition
that she did not see into the character of the man whom they were
discussing; but a woman never thinks it a crime for a man to have been
in love with her, whatever opinion of that man her husband may hold.

"It is awful! awful! awful!" murmured the poor lady, as the tears again