It was characteristic of Rachel that she did not for a moment—­even that unlooked-for moment—­pretend to be unfamiliar with the case.

“Don’t you?” he asked.

“I haven’t thought about it,” said Rachel, looking pensively at the flowers.  “But surely it was a very sordid case?”

“The case!” he cried.  “Yes, sordid as you like; but I don’t mean the case at all.”

“Then what do you mean, Mr. Langholm?”

“Her after life,” he whispered; “the psychology of that woman, and her subsequent adventures!  She disappeared into thin air immediately after the trial.  I suppose you knew that?”

“I did hear it.”

Rachel moistened her lips with champagne.

“Well, I should take her from that moment,” said Langholm.  “I should start her story there.”

“And should you make her guilty or not guilty?”

“Ah!” said Langholm, as though that would require consideration; unluckily, he paused to consider on the spot.

“Who are you talking about?” inquired Mr. Venables, who had caught Rachel’s last words.

“Mrs. Minchin,” she told him steadily.

“Guilty!” cried Mr. Venables, with great energy.  “Guilty, and I’d have gone to see her hanged myself!”

And Mr. Venables beamed upon Rachel as though proud of the sentiment, while the diamonds rose and fell upon her white neck, where he would have had the rope.

“A greater scandal,” he went on, both to Rachel and to the lady on his other side (who interrupted Mr. Venables to express devout agreement), “a greater scandal and miscarriage of justice I have never known.  Guilty?  Of course she was guilty; and I only wish we could try her again and hang her yet!  Now don’t pretend you sympathize with a woman like that,” he said to Rachel, with a look like a nudge; “you haven’t been married long enough; and for Heaven’s sake don’t refuse that bird!  It’s the best that can be got this time of year, though that’s not saying much; but wait till the grouse season, Mrs. Steel!  I have a moor here in the dales, keep a cellar full of them, and eat ’em as they drop off the string.”

“Well?” said Rachel, turning to Langholm when her host became a busy man once more.

“I should make her guilty,” said the novelist; “and she would marry a man who believed in her innocence, and he wouldn’t care two pins when she told him the truth in the last chapter, and they would live happily ever afterwards.  Nobody would touch the serial rights.  But that would be a book!”

“Then do you think she really was guilty?”

And Rachel waited while he shrugged, her heart beating for no good reason that she knew, except that she rather liked Mr. Langholm, and did not wish to cease liking him on the spot.  But it was to him that the answer was big with fate; and he trifled and dallied with the issue of the moment, little dreaming what a mark it was to leave upon his life, while the paradox beloved of the literary took shape on his tongue.