"
"His son? Oh, not by his son! His nephew, you mean?"
"His son. Anthony Hurdlestone. The heir of his immense wealth."
He spoke to a cold ear. Juliet had fainted.
How did that dreadful night pass over the hapless maiden? It did pass,
however, and on the morrow she was far on her journey home.
"I never thought he could be guilty of a crime like this," said the
Captain to his sister as she sat opposite to him in his travelling
carriage. His arm encircled the slender waist of his daughter, and her
pale cheek rested on his shoulder. But no tear hung in the long, dark,
drooping eyelashes of his child. Juliet was stunned; but she had not
wept.
"He is not guilty," she cried, in a passionate voice. "I know and feel
that he is not guilty. Remember Mary Mathews--how strong the
circumstantial evidence against him in that case. Yet he was
innocent--innocent, poor Anthony!"
The Captain, who felt the most tender sympathy for the state of mind
into which this afflicting news had thrown his child, was willing to
soothe, if possible, her grief.
"If he is innocent it will be proved on the trial, Julee darling. We
will hope for the best."
"It will be proved," said Juliet, sitting upright, and looking her
father earnestly, if not sternly in the face. "I am so confident of his
innocence that, on that score, I have not shed a single tear.
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