The Cloven Foot by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

While John Treverton was in Paris, waiting to obtain proof of Jean Kergariou's identity with the sailor whose corpse he had seen carried to the Morgue, Laura was sitting alone in her husband's study, full of anxious thoughts. The telegram from Auray had been delivered at the Manor House early in the afternoon, and had given comfort to the weary heart of John Treverton's wife; but even this assurance of good news could not silence her fears. One horrible idea pursued her wherever she turned her thoughts, an ever-present source of terror. Her husband, the man for whom she would have given her life, had been suspected -- even broadly accused -- of murder. Let him go where he would, change his name and surroundings as often as he would, that hideous suspicion would follow him like his shadow. She recalled much that she had read about La Chicot's murder in the daily papers. She remembered how even she herself had been impressed with an idea of the husband's guilt. Every circumstance had seemed to point at him. And who else was there to be suspected?

Strong in her faith in the man she loved, Laura Treverton was as fully convinced of her husband's innocence as if she had been by his side when he came home on the night of the murder, and stood aghast on the threshold of his wife's chamber, gazing at the horrid crimson stream that had slowly oozed from under the door, dreadful evidence of the deed that had been done. There was no doubt in her mind, no uncertainty in her thoughts: but she knew that as she had thought in the past, when she had read of the man called Chicot, so others would think in the future, if John Treverton, _alias_ Chicot, were to stand at the bar accused of his wife's murder.