Was there a word of truth in what she had just asseverated with such extraordinary emphasis? He greatly doubted it. And yet if there should be! The mere thought of such a thing turned him dizzy.
A burning curiosity got the better of his discretion. "The real criminal was----" He paused for a moment, as if expecting Mrs. Jenwyn to fill up the hiatus.
"Pardon me, Mr. Marsh," she said, "but what I have to reveal must first of all be told Mr. Drelincourt. When that has been done, the affair will be out of my hands. But you, in your turn, can tell me something, provided there is no objection to your doing so. By what circumstances was Mr. Drelincourt influenced in coming to his strange determination to charge himself with the commission of a crime of which he is wholly guiltless?"
Rodd told himself that, although she had not answered his question, there was no reason why he should not answer hers.
"In early life Mr. Drelincourt was addicted to walking in his sleep, and it was while he was in one of his fits of somnambulism that he believed himself to have been guilty of the death of his wife. I need not trouble you with the details of the evidence which seemed to bring the crime irresistibly home to him; it will be enough to remark that both to him and me--for all the particulars of the affair have been known to me from the first--it appeared absolutely conclusive. And yet, Mrs. Jenwyn, you now assert, and in the most positive terms, that Mr. Drelincourt's belief had absolutely no foundation of fact!"
"I do assert it, and at the proper time and place I shall be prepared to prove my words."
Roden Marsh sank back in his seat with a great sigh of contentment. However amazing it might seem, he could no longer doubt that Mrs. Jenwyn was in a position to carry out all that she had undertaken to do. Her words and manner were convincing.
About the details of the story she had come prepared to tell he cared little; it was enough for him to know that the dread burden which had weighed upon them for so many years would at length be lifted off the shoulders of his beloved foster brother, never to be reimposed. With the question of whose shoulders it was about to be transferred to he did not trouble himself at all.