“Will you have one of Thorndyke’s special brand?” I asked malignantly.

“What! those foul Trichinopolies?  Not while brown paper is to be obtained at every stationer’s; I’d sooner smoke my own wig.”

I tendered my own case, from which he selected a cigar with anxious care and much sniffing; then he bade me a ceremonious adieu and departed down the stairs, blithely humming a melody from the latest comic opera.

He had not left more than five minutes when a soft and elaborate rat-tat from the little brass knocker brought my heart into my mouth.  I ran to the door and flung it open, revealing Juliet standing on the threshold.

“May I come in?” she asked.  “I want to have a few words with you before we start.”

I looked at her with some anxiety, for she was manifestly agitated, and the hand that she held out to me trembled.

“I am greatly upset, Dr. Jervis,” she said, ignoring the chair that I had placed for her.  “Mr. Lawley has been giving us his views of poor Reuben’s case, and his attitude fills me with dismay.”

“Hang Mr. Lawley!” I muttered, and then apologised hastily.  “What made you go to him, Miss Gibson?”

“I didn’t go to him; he came to us.  He dined with us last night—­he and Walter—­and his manner was gloomy in the extreme.  After dinner Walter took him apart with me and asked him what he really thought of the case.  He was most pessimistic.  ‘My dear sir,’ he said, ’the only advice I can give you is that you prepare yourself to contemplate disaster as philosophically as you can.  In my opinion your cousin is almost certain to be convicted.’  ‘But,’ said Walter, ’what about the defence?  I understood that there was at least a plausible case.’  Mr. Lawley shrugged his shoulders.  ’I have a sort of alibi that will go for nothing, but I have no evidence to offer in answer to that of the prosecution, and no case; and I may say, speaking in confidence, that I do not believe there is any case.  I do not see how there can be any case, and I have heard nothing from Dr. Thorndyke to lead me to suppose that he has really done anything in the matter.’  Is this true, Dr. Jervis?  Oh! do tell me the real truth about it!  I have been so miserable and terrified since I heard this, and I was so full of hope before.  Tell me, is it true?  Will Reuben be sent to prison after all?”

In her agitation she laid her hands on my arm and looked up into my face with her grey eyes swimming with tears, and was so piteous, so trustful, and, withal, so bewitching that my reserve melted like snow before a July sun.

“It is not true,” I answered, taking her hands in mine and speaking perforce in a low tone that I might not betray my emotion.  “If it were, it would mean that I have wilfully deceived you, that I have been false to our friendship; and how much that friendship has been to me, no one but myself will ever know.”

She crept a little closer to me with a manner at once penitent and wheedling.