Rachel had never wavered in these ideas, but neither had she dwelt on them to any extent, and now they came one instant only to go the next.  Her husband was dead—­that was once more the paramount thought—­and she his widow had been acquitted on a charge of murdering him.  But for the moment she was thinking only of him, and her eyes hung over the spot where she had seen him sitting dead—­once without dreaming it—­and soon they filled.  Perhaps she was remembering all that had been good in him, perhaps all that had been evil in herself; her lips quivered, and her eyes filled.  But it was hard to pity one who was at rest, hard for her with the world to face afresh that night, without a single friend.  The Carringtons?  Well, she would see; and now she had a very definite point upon which to consult Mr. Carrington.  That helped her, and she went, quietly and unseen as she had come.

There was still a light in the ground-floor windows of the Tite Street house, strong lights and voices; it was the dining-room, for the Minchins had dined there once; and the voices did not include a feminine one that Rachel could perceive.  If there were people dining with them, the ladies must have gone upstairs, and Mrs. Carrington was the woman to see Rachel for five minutes, and the one woman in England to whom she could turn.  It was an opportunity not to miss—­she had not the courage to let it pass—­and yet it required almost as much to ring the bell.  And even as she rang—­but not until that moment—­did Rachel recognize and admit to herself the motive which had brought her to that door.  It was not to obtain the advice of a clever man; it was the sympathy of another woman that she needed that night more than anything else in all the world.

She was shown at once into the study behind the dining-room, and immediately the voices in the latter ceased.  This was ominous; it was for Mrs. Carrington that Rachel had asked; and the omen was instantly fulfilled.  It was Mr. Carrington who came into the room, dark, dapper, and duskily flushed with his own hospitality, but without the genial front which Rachel had liked best in him.  His voice also, when he had carefully shut the door behind him, was unnaturally stiff.

“I congratulate you,” he said, with a bow but nothing more; and Rachel saw there and then how it was to be; for with her at least this man had never been stiff before, having indeed offended her with his familiarity at the time when her husband and he were best friends.

“I owe it very largely to you,” faltered Rachel.  “How can I thank you?”

Carrington said it was not necessary.

“Then I only hope,” said Rachel, on one of her impulses, “that you don’t disagree with the verdict?”

“I didn’t read the case,” replied Carrington glibly, and with neither more nor less of the contemptuous superiority with which he would have referred to any other Old Bailey trial; but the man himself was quick to see the brutality of such a statement, and quicker yet to tone it down.