’I have promised to be in Clerkenwell at eight o’clock.  There’ll be a meeting.  I shall do my best to show that I am innocent.  You’ll look after Alice?  It’s awful to have to leave her whilst she’s like that.’

’Trust me.  I will not leave her side for a moment.  The doctor will be here again to-night.’

A thought struck him.

’Send out the girl for an evening paper.  There may be something in it.’

The paper was obtained.  One of the first headings his eye fell upon was:  ’Rumoured Collapse of a Public Company.  Disappearance of the Secretary.’  He showed it to Adela, and they read together.  She saw that the finger with which he followed the lines quivered like a leaf.  It was announced in a brief paragraph that the Secretary of the Irish Dairy Company was missing:  that he seemed to have gone off with considerable sums.  Moreover, that there were rumours in the City of a startling kind, relative to the character of the Company itself.  The name of the secretary was Mr. Robert Delancey, but that was now believed to be a mere alias.  The police were actively at work.

‘It’ll be the ruin of me!’ Mutimer gasped.  ’I can never prove that I knew nothing.  You see, nothing’s said about Hilary.  It’s that fellow Delancey who has run.’

‘You must find Mr. Hilary,’ said Adela urgently.  ’Where does he live?’

’I have no idea.  I only had the office address.  Perhaps it isn’t even his real name.  It’ll be my ruin.’

Adela was astonished to see him so broken down.  He let himself sink upon a chair; his head and hands fell.

‘But I can’t understand why you should despair so!’ she exclaimed.  ’You will speak to the meeting to-night.  If the money is lost you will restore it.  If you have been imprudent, that is no crime.’

’It is—­it is—­when I had money of that kind entrusted to me!  They won’t hear me.  They have condemned me already.  What use is it to talk to them?  They’ll say everything comes to smash in my hands.’

She spoke to him with such words of strengthening as one of his comrades might have used.  She did not feel the tenderness of a wife, and had no power to assume it.  But her voice was brave and true.  She had made his interest, his reputation, her own.  By degrees he recovered from the blow, and let her words give him heart.

‘You’re right,’ he said, ’I’m behaving like a fool; I couldn’t go on different if I was really guilty.  Who wrote that letter?  I never saw the letter before, as far as I know.  I wanted to keep it, but they wouldn’t let me—­trust them!  What black guards they are I They’re jealous of me.  They know they can’t speak like I do, that they haven’t the same influence I have.  So they’re ready to believe the first lie that’s brought against me.  Let them look to themselves to-night!  I’ll give them a piece of my mind—­see if I don’t!  What’s to-day?  Friday.  On Sunday I’ll have the biggest meeting ever gathered in the East End.  If they shout out against me, I’ll tell them to their faces that they’re mean-spirited curs.  They haven’t the courage to rise and get by force what they’ll never have by asking for it, and when a man does his best to help them they throw mud at him!’