Mauleverer murmured something about an action for false imprisonment, but he did not make it clear, and he was evidently greatly crestfallen.  He had no doubt hoped to brazen out his assumed character sufficiently to disconcert Mr. Beauchamp’s faith in his own memory, and though he had carried on the same game after being confronted with Maria, it was already becoming desperate.  He had not reckoned upon her deserting his cause even for her own sake, and the last chance of employing her antecedents to discredit her testimony, had been overthrown by Rose’s innocent witness to their mutual relations, a remembrance which had been burnt in on her childish memory by the very means taken to secure her silence.  When the depositions were read over, their remarkable and independent accordance was most striking; Mrs. Dench had already been led away by the minister, in time to catch her train, just when her sobs of indignation at the deception were growing too demonstrative, and the policeman resumed the charge of Maria Hatherton.

Little Rose looked up to her, saying, “Please, Aunt Ailie, may I speak to her?”

Alison had been sitting restless and perplexed between impulses of pity and repulsion, and doubts about the etiquette of the justice room; but her heart yearned over the girl she had cherished, and she signed permission to Rose, whose timidity had given way amid excitement and encouragement.

“Please, Maria,” she said, “don’t be angry with me for telling; I never did till Colonel Keith asked me, and I could not help it.  Will you kiss me and forgive me as you used?”

The hard fierce eyes, that had not wept over the child’s coffin, filled with tears.

“Oh, Miss Rose, Miss Rose, do not come near me.  Oh, if I had minded you—­and your aunts—­” And the pent-up misery of the life that had fallen lower and lower since the first step in evil, found its course in a convulsive sob and shriek, so grievous that Alison was thankful for Colin’s promptitude in laying hold of Rose, and leading her out of the room before him.  Alison felt obliged to follow, yet could not bear to leave Maria to policemen and prison warders.

“Maria, poor Maria, I am so sorry for you, I will try to come and see you—­”

But her hand was seized with an imperative, “Ailie, you must come, they are all waiting for you.”

How little had she thought her arm would ever be drawn into that arm, so unheeded by both.

“So that is Edward’s little girl!  Why, she is the sweetest little clear-headed thing I have seen a long time.  She was the saving of us.”

“It was well thought of by Colin.”

“Colin is a lawyer spoilt—­that’s a fact.  A first-rate get-up of a case!”

“And you think it safe now?”

“Nothing safer, so Edward turns up.  How he can keep away from such a child as that, I can’t imagine.  Where is she?  Oh, here—­” as they came into the porch in fuller light, where the Colonel and Rose waited for them.  “Ha, my little Ailie, I must make better friends with you.”