A quiet despair gleamed in the eyes of each.
Cyril could never marry her till he had cleared up this mystery.
Elma could never marry him, even if it were all cleared up, with that
terrible taint of madness, as she thought it, hanging threateningly
for ever over her and her family.
She paused for a minute or two, with her hand locked in his. Then
she said once more, very low, "No, Guy didn't do it. But why did
he run away? That baffles me quite. That's the one point of it
all that makes it so strange and so terribly mysterious."
"Elma," Cyril answered, with a cold thrill, "I believe in Guy;
I think I know myself, and I think I know him, well enough to say
that such a thing as murder is impossible for either of us. He's weak
at times, I admit, and his will was powerless before the magnetic
force of Montague Nevitt's. But when I try to face that inscrutable
mystery of why, if he's innocent, he has run away from this
charge, I confess my faith begins to falter and tremble. He must
have seen it in the papers. He must have seen I was accused. What
can he mean by leaving me to bear it in his stead without ever
coming forward to help me fairly out of it?"
Elma looked up at him with another of her sudden flashes of superb
intuition.
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