We recovered him at length from the dead faint into which he had fallen.  Polly, who thought but of the body, insisted on bringing him “a good heavy-glass of Port-wine sangaree, with toasted crackers in it”; and wouldn’t let him speak till he had drunken and eaten.  Then she went out of the room, and left me alone with my justly incensed lover.

I took a brioche, and sat down humbly at the head of the sofa.  He held out his hand, which I took and pressed in mine,—­silently, to be sure; but then no words could tell how I had felt, and now felt,—­how humiliated! how grieved!  How wrongly I must have seemed to feel and to act! how wrongly I must have acted,—­though my conscience excused me from feeling wrongly,—­so to have deluded Herbert!

At last I murmured something regretful and tearful about Lieutenant Herbert—­Herbert! how I had admired that name!—­and now, this Ithuriel touch, how it had changed it and him forever to me!  What was in a name?—­sure enough!  As I gazed on the pale face on the couch, I should not have cared, if it had been named Alligator,—­so elevated was I beyond all I had thought or called trouble of that sort! so real was the trouble that could affect the feelings, the sensitiveness, of the noble being before me!

At length he spoke, very calmly and quietly, setting down the empty tumbler.  I trembled, for I knew it must come.

“I was so glad that fool came in, Del!  For, to tell the truth, I felt really too weak to talk.  I haven’t slept for two nights, and have been on my feet and talking for four hours,—­then I have had no dinner”—­

“Oh!”

“And a damned intelligent jury, (I beg your pardon, but it’s a great comfort to swear, sometimes,) that I can’t humbug.  But I must!  I must, to-morrow!” he exclaimed, springing up from the sofa and walking hurriedly across the room.

“Oh, do sit down, if you are so tired!”

“I cannot sit down, unless you will let me stop thinking.  I have but one idea constantly.”

“But if the man is guilty, why do you want to clear him?” said I.

Not a word had he been thinking of me or of Herbert all this time!  But then he had been thinking of a matter of life and death.  How all, all my foolish feelings took to flight!  It was some comfort that my lover had not either seen or suspected them.  He thought he must have been nearly senseless for some time.  The last he remembered was, we were looking at some pictures.

Laura came in from Mrs. Harris’s, and, hearing how the case was, insisted on having a chicken broiled, and that he should eat some green-apple tarts, of her own cooking,—­not sentimental, nor even wholesome, but they suited the occasion; and we sat, after that, all three talking, till past twelve o’clock.  No danger now, Laura said, of bad dreams, if he did go to bed.

“But why do you care so very much, if you don’t get him off?—­you suppose him guilty, you say?”