"Well, Hilary, this is sad news for you, I know, but—"
"Godfather!" Hilary did not shake off his hand. She looked up at him imploringly. "Basil is innocent, you know."
Sir Felix frowned slightly. "I hope so, but I don't know. The case is very black against him. I'm afraid he will find it very difficult to persuade a jury of his innocence."
Hilary took her courage in both hands.
"No, perhaps he will not be able to—but I think you could, Sir Felix."
Sir Felix's frown deepened. He looked at her.
"What do you mean exactly, Hilary?"
"I—I mean that if you defend him, you can get him off—make the jury say he is not guilty," Hilary faltered.
Sir Felix did not speak for a minute. At last he said slowly:
"I very much doubt whether I or anyone else could do anything for Wilton, Hilary. And how could I defend him—how could I try to help a man who is accused of murdering my best friend?"
Hilary twisted her fingers together.
"I thought perhaps—you would because—I asked you," she stammered.
Sir Felix looked at her.
"Supposing that Wilton is guilty, as all the world believes—as I believe—would you still wish him to escape his punishment, Hilary?"
"Yes, yes! But I know—I know he is not guilty," Hilary cried with sudden fire. "Oh, Sir Felix, save him—save him for—"
"For you," he finished severely. "No, Hilary, you are asking too much! I will not raise a finger to help you to marry Basil Wilton. Remember your father on the last day of his life forbade your engagement. What would he say now—now that he is accused of murder—double murder? Do you think that he would give his cherished only daughter to him now? No, Hilary, I cannot defend Wilton."
There was a tense silence. Hilary felt that every drop was draining from her face, even her lips felt stiff. Her vivid imagination was picturing the future that lay before Basil Wilton. The trial at which he would be pilloried before the world; the verdict of the jury; the sentence—"to be hanged by your neck until you are dead"—then the last dread morning, the stumbling blindfolded figure in the hands of his executioners. She shuddered as she raised her ghastly face. Such a horror was too awful to contemplate. Gazing into the stern eyes of the man before her, the certainty dawned on her that only in one way could she hope to alter Skrine's determination—one sacrifice that she must make for love's sake.
"Sir Felix, you—you asked me a—a—something the other day."
Something like a gleam of triumph shot into the steel-blue eyes. But Skrine's voice was colder than Hilary had ever heard it:
"Yes. And you said no. I am not likely to forget that, Hilary." His tone was repressive in the extreme.
But Hilary was desperate. The sinister visions her distorted fancy had conjured up, the pain and the terror, the thwarted love of the past months had warped her judgment.
"If I tell you that I will marry you, will you save Basil Wilton?" she questioned with a crudity that made Skrine draw his lips together.
When he spoke it was very deliberately. "Naturally I should wish to do anything my wife asked me. Does this mean that you have changed your mind, Hilary?"
"I will marry you if you will save Basil Wilton," she replied tonelessly.
"Suppose that I do defend him and cannot get him off—it, as far as I have read the evidence in the papers, looks as though it might be beyond the power of mortal man to do—what would you say to me then, Hilary?"
Hilary clasped her hands.
"Oh, but you will—you must. People are saying that you are the only man who can get Basil off. Dad used to say that you could make a jury believe that black was white."
"Ah! He thought too much of me." Skrine's face was curiously contorted.
He turned, as though the very mention of his dead friend was too much for his self-control. He began to walk up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent as if in thought. Hilary watched him miserably, catching her breath every now and then in long drawn sobs.
At last he came to a standstill beside her.
"If I did give all my energies to getting Wilton off—for I warn you that it is an almost impossible task that you set me, Hilary, one that will tax my strength to the utmost—and if I succeed, what guarantee have I that you will keep your promise, that, Wilton being free, you will not throw me over for him?"
Hilary drew herself up. "You will have my word."
"Yes." Skrine turned from her beseeching eyes and resumed his walk to the end of the room and back. Through the open window beside her Hilary heard the sound of voices. Fee was being taken out to the garden, Miss Lavinia with him. Both were speaking in low tones, as though some doom overhung the house.
Hilary watched with unseeing eyes, hardly knowing what she was looking at, her whole being absorbed in the one thought of Basil Wilton's danger. More than once Skrine looked at her. When at last he spoke it was from the other end of the room.
"Yes, Hilary, I will defend Wilton. I think I can promise you that I will get him off—at any rate I will do my best—if you will let me announce the engagement and forthcoming marriage now."
A hot touch of crimson streaked Hilary's white cheeks.
"I will marry you if you save Basil," she echoed. "But what guarantee shall I have that you will when I have bound myself?"
"My word—as you said just now. My word that I will do my best," Sir Felix said gravely. "More it is not in the power of man to promise."
Hilary threw out her hands.
"Oh, you must—you must. If you do—I—"
"You will want to marry him, I am afraid. Hilary, I will do my very utmost to save Wilton if you give me your word of honour to marry me the day after the trial. If you do not—well"—he shrugged his shoulders—"I shall leave Wilton to his fate. And that fate will be—death."
Hilary's face turned ghastly, then flushed hotly crimson, back again to white.
"You give me no choice. I cannot help myself. I will marry you at once after the trial if—if you get Basil off. I shall always remember that you—that you—" she gasped.
"Hilary, you have conquered!" Skrine interrupted. "Heaven forbid that I should take advantage of your—your trouble. Promise to marry me—some day—and I will trust you to keep your word. I will defend Wilton, and Fee shall go to Dr. Blathwayte's home for his cure. What do you say?"
"I don't know—" Hilary hesitated.
When she was a child she had been fond of Skrine, but her affection for him had not grown deeper as the years rolled by. Lately, in these few months since her father's death, since she had been in his guardianship, a new element of fear seemed to have crept into their relationship. But now—now she told herself, that she had no choice, false and treacherous though he had shown himself, she could not let Basil Wilton meet a shameful death when a word of hers might save him. She held out her hand.
"I—I will trust you too. I will marry you—when you have saved Basil, Sir Felix."
Chapter XX
"You know that Sir Felix Skrine offered to defend Wilton?"
The inspector nodded.
"It won't do him any harm, if it