“The world is no place for a man of your stamp, is perhaps a better way of putting it,” said Armitage, whose fingers were twitching convulsively, and whose whole frame quivered with the effort he was making to restrain the rage and indignation that consumed him.  He could not—­he would not—­believe in her guilt.  He must have this man’s proof, no matter how it might damn him for good and all, no matter whom else it might involve, so long as it cleared her precious name.  He must be patient, he must be calm and resolute; but the man’s cold-blooded, selfish, criminal concealment nearly maddened him.  With infinite effort he controlled himself, and went on: 

“But it is of her I’m thinking, not of you.  It is the name you have compromised and can clear, and should clear, even at the expense of your own,—­in fact, Mr. Jerrold, must clear.  Now will you tell me where you were and how you can prove it?”

“I decline to say.  I won’t be cross-questioned by men who have no authority.  Captain Chester said he would refer it to the colonel; and when he asks I will answer,—­not until then.”

“I ask in his name.  I am authorized by him, for he is not well enough to meet the ordeal.”

“You say so, and I don’t mean to dispute your word, Captain Armitage, but I have a right to demand some proof.  How am I to know he authorized you?”

“He himself gave me this letter, in your handwriting,” said Armitage; and, opening the long envelope, he held forth the missive over which the poor old colonel had gone nearly wild.  “He found it the morning they left,—­in her garden.”

If Jerrold’s face had been gray before, it was simply ghastly now.  He recoiled from the sight after one fruitless effort to grasp the letter, then rallied with unlooked-for spirit: 

“By heaven, Armitage, suppose I did write that letter?  What does it prove but what I say,—­that somebody has been prying and spying into my affairs?  How came the colonel by it, if not by fraud or treachery?”

“He picked it up in the garden, I tell you,—­among the rose-bushes, where she—­where Miss Renwick had been but a few moments before, and where it might appear that she had dropped it.”

“She! That letter!  What had she to do with it?  What right had she to read it?”

Armitage stepped impulsively forward.  A glad, glorious light was bursting upon his soul.  He could almost have seized Jerrold’s hand and thanked him; but proofs—­proofs were what he needed.  It was not his mind that was to be convinced, it was “society” that must be satisfied of her utter innocence, that it might be enabled to say, “Well, I never for a moment believed a word of it.”  Link by link the chain of circumstantial evidence must be destroyed, and this was only one.

“You mean that that letter was not intended for Miss Renwick?” he asked, with eagerness he strove hard to repress.