"Good God!" she heard him mutter. "Married all these months!--and I,

who loved you, trusted you!"----He broke off with a gesture of angry

despair. Her lip quivered, her eyes followed him for a moment and then

filled with tears. She went over to the mantel-piece, and resting her

arms upon it, she hid her face.

It was a long time before he stopped beside her, but then his voice

showed recovered self-control. "Will you tell me," he said, "exactly

how and when this marriage took place?"

She turned with a little shuddering sigh and raised her white,

exhausted face to his. "It was at Cranston," she said, quietly, "one

day in July. I did it hastily. My aunts were opposed to it, and--I

hated to make them unhappy. But I--I thought I loved him. It was a

mistake. I went up to Cranston to meet him, and--we were married. It

was in church--there were witnesses, we signed a register--it was all

legal, or at least I suppose so. And then--when we came out"----she

paused.

"Yes--when you came out?"--Gerard repeated the words hoarsely, his

brows drawn together, his eyes fixed upon her in an agonized

questioning.--"What then, Elizabeth?"

She hesitated, staring straight before her, as if she were trying to

recall the whole thing exactly as it happened. "When we came out of

the church, I felt--I don't know why--I felt frightened. I seemed to

realize--indeed, I think I _had_ realized all the time--what a mistake

it was. He begged me to come away with him, and I--I refused. He had

promised me that I should go home, and that he wouldn't claim me for

six months, and--I held him to it. He gave in at last, and so--we

parted"----

"Ah!"--Gerard drew a long breath.--"You--parted?"

"Yes. I left him and came home. I got there about four--my aunts

suspected nothing. He went abroad. And--after a while he stopped

writing, I thought he had forgotten me. It all began to seem like a

dream. And then--Eleanor Van Antwerp asked me to come to town,

and--the rest you know."

"No, not all." Gerard insisted. "When the fellow came home, why didn't

he claim you? How have you kept him quiet, all this time?"

"Ah, that was easy."--She spoke listlessly.--"He didn't care anything

about me; I used to give him money. I sold my pearls--all my jewelry,

in fact. Yes"--as Gerard uttered a horrified exclamation--"it was a

terrible bondage, but what could I do? He had me in his power. I used

to wonder if the marriage were legal, but there was no one whom I

dared ask. And then I thought sometimes that he might die--I had all

sorts of wild ideas; but nothing happened, and meanwhile he

threatened--to tell you everything. I bought him off twice, and

then--this last time"--she paused--"this last time I promised him all

my income if he would give me up forever, and never trouble me again.

Ah, you think it unpardonable, I see"--she put out her hand with a

deprecating gesture--"but you don't know what it is to be

tempted--desperate. I was determined I wouldn't ruin my life. And

then--then"--her voice faltered--"this evening when you seemed so

happy, so trustful--that was what hurt me, Julian--it was easier when

you were jealous, suspicious, as you were at first--it came to me

suddenly that I couldn't begin the New Year--I couldn't begin our life

together with this--this terrible secret weighing on my soul. And so

I--I told you"----

Elizabeth's voice faltered, she raised her eyes in a half conscious

appeal. It seemed to her for the moment as if the agony of that

confession must make amends to some extent even for such deceit as

hers. But Gerard's face did not soften. Her whole conduct seemed to

him monstrous, incredible. He could not accept as atonement this tardy

repentance, the fact that she had told him the truth--at the eleventh

hour.

The thought occurred to him, which she had herself suggested, earlier

in the evening. He remembered chance gossip of the Neighborhood about

her antecedents, listened to vaguely even before he knew her, and

haunting him afterwards in the first days of their acquaintance, till

love had made him cast it aside, as a thing of no importance. Now it

recurred to his mind as the only explanation--he did not accept it as

an excuse--of this weakness which seemed otherwise inexplicable. No

doubt there must be, he told himself, in the child of such

parents,--it would be strange if there were not--some hereditary

taint, some lack of moral fibre, which curiously imperceptible in

other ways, must needs assert itself in any great moral crisis. The

thought, which might have softened him, seemed at the time only to

steel him the more against her.

He fell again to pacing up and down, thinking it over; seeing past

incidents afresh in the merciless light of his present knowledge;

recalling this or that insignificant circumstance which at the time

had aroused, unreasonably as it seemed, his distrust;--her occasional

uneasiness and distress, that air she had of being on her guard, the

look in the picture--ah, he understood it now! It was the shadow of

falsehood, which for months had clouded her every thought and action.

What a fool he had been, he reflected fiercely--how he had allowed

himself to be deceived--made an easy prey by the extent of his

infatuation--how she had juggled with the truth, telling him the worst

of herself in such a way that he had believed, all the more

determinedly, the reverse.

He stopped at last his restless pacing to and fro and paused beside

her. The fierce tide of anger, the first bitterness of his

disillusion, had subsided. He was cold, with the coldness of despair.

His face was worn and haggard, as if from the suffering of years, but

it was set in rigid lines, from which all feeling seemed to have

vanished. His eyes were dry and hard.

"I think," he said, and there was a dull, toneless sound in his voice;

he spoke slowly, like one who either weighed his words with great

care, or was afraid to trust himself too far, "I think there had

better be an end to this. I should only say, if I said all I thought,

things I might afterwards--regret; and I wouldn't"--his voice broke

ever so little--"God knows I don't want to be unjust! But I

cannot"--he let his hand fall with a look of dull despair--"I _cannot_

understand how you have kept this from me all these months!"

He paused, as if expecting an answer, an excuse, perhaps of some sort;

but she said nothing, and he went on, after a moment, his voice

growing more uncertain: "It isn't so much the marriage--that could be,

perhaps"--He hesitated, his heavy brows drawn together frowning--"The

man must be an absolute wretch," he said, suddenly, "there must

be--for your sake I hope so--some way out"----

"Oh, for me"--she made a little gesture of utter carelessness--"for me

it can make no difference--now."

"For myself," he went on, not heeding her words, perhaps not fully

grasping their meaning, "I couldn't--whether the marriage held or

not--I couldn't forgive--being so deceived."

He stopped and again seemed to expect some protest, but she only

repeated, in a dull voice of complete acquiescence: "No, I didn't

think you could forgive--being so deceived"----

"Even if I could forgive," he said, "I could never trust"----

"No," she repeated, "you could never trust." Her face was colorless,

but impassive, as if it had been turned to stone, her voice was almost

as firm as his. "You are quite right," she said. "I deserve all the

harsh things you could say. It is kind of you to say--so few. Perhaps,

later, you'll judge me more gently; but--I couldn't expect it now. And

so"--she faltered and caught her breath, as if her strength failed

her--"and so good-bye," she said at last. "I think it can only hurt us

both to--discuss this any longer."

Her calmness stunned him. He had been prepared for tears--excuses--but

she offered no defence and made no effort to arouse his pity. There

was a dignity in her complete submission. He looked at her, his face

working with varied emotions; and then he said "Good-bye" mechanically

and took her hand for an instant. It was icy cold and lay impassively

in his. He dropped it and moved towards the door, as if under some

spell, deprived of all capacity for thought or feeling. Involuntarily,

her eyes followed him. Was this the parting, after so many months? But

at the door he paused, he looked back. The firelight played on her

hair, on her white dress, the drooping lines of her slender form, the

deathly pallor of her face, the despair in her eyes.... He softened,

perhaps, or it might be that the mere physical spell of her beauty

held him, even when all that made the glory of his love, had been

rudely shattered. He came back, caught her in his arms, and pressed

burning kisses on her lips. She trembled as if they had been blows,

but she made no effort to free herself. And then, as if ashamed of his

weakness, he let her go and went out hastily. A moment later she heard

the front door close, with a dull sound that echoed through the quiet

rooms.

She stood where he had left her, staring blankly about her at the

familiar objects which seemed to have acquired, during the last hour,

an air of change, of unreality. What had happened, what had she done?

Awhile ago she had been borne up by a courage that seemed almost

heroic, a sense of moral victory. Now that had failed her. She was

simply a woman despised and heart-broken, who by her own suicidal act

had destroyed her happiness.

"How--how can I bear it?" she broke out, at last, fiercely, and

sinking down on the hearth-rug, she lay prostrate, her face hidden,

while her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs. The old Dutch clock

ticked softly, pitifully, in the silence; the fire flickered and died

away. But outside in the street spasmodic whistles kept on blowing,

and belated wayfarers still bade each other, with laughter and

jollity, "Happy New Year."

_Chapter XXIX_

It was eight days later. Elizabeth's trouble and the New Year were

both a week old. She had lived through the time somehow or another,

had even faced those smaller trials which follow in the wake of any

great catastrophe. She had told the whole truth to her aunts--it was

only less hard than telling Gerard--she had written to her friends to

announce the breaking of her engagement, and had countermanded the

orders for her trousseau. These affairs disposed of, she was ready to

face the world with such strength as she had left.

For Gerard the situation was simpler. He had taken at once his man's

way out of it, and pacing the deck of an ocean steamer, he tried to

distract his mind and forget his trouble in plans for extensive travel

and scientific research. They had been his resource once before, when

a woman had disappointed him.

He had not seen Elizabeth again. He dreaded, perhaps, to trust

himself, or perhaps his anger was still too great. But he had written

before he left to her aunts, urging them to consult a lawyer and take

steps at once to free her from the results of her rash marriage. To

himself, he justified this weakness--if it were weakness--by the

thought of Halleck's baseness. "I could not bear to think of her as

his wife," he said to himself, "a fellow who could give her up for

money!"

Upon Elizabeth's aunts the affair had come like a thunderbolt. They

were quite unprepared for it, though many suspicious circumstances--the

mystery as to Elizabeth's jewels, her own occasional words--might have

suggested the idea that something was amiss. But absorbed in their

delight in the engagement, their affection for Gerard, they had not

the heart to formulate any doubt they might have felt. Now, in the

first shock of their awakening, they remembered unwillingly the same

facts of family history which had occurred to Gerard. What could they

have expected from Malvina's child but deceit, folly and disgrace? But

they were gentle souls, and had no reproaches for Elizabeth, only a

silent, sorrowful pity, which hurt the girl's proud spirit more than

the sharpest words.

She was lingering that morning, pale and languid, over her untasted

breakfast, and Miss Cornelia, from behind the coffee-urn, stole

anxious glances towards her, all sense of injury lost in her distress

over the girl's wretched looks, and fear that she was going to be ill.

They two were alone, Miss Joanna having already started to do her

marketing, when the maid entered with the belated newspaper. Miss

Cornelia held out her delicate, tremulous hand for it, nervously

apprehensive of that paragraph which no doubt in the society columns,

announced that the engagement between Miss Van Vorst and Mr. Gerard

had been broken "by mutual consent."

It was not this notice which met her eyes, but some exciting

head-lines on the first page which had already attracted the attention

of the cook and the housemaid.

"Elizabeth," said Miss Cornelia, in a stifled voice. "Elizabeth--what

is this?"

Elizabeth raised her vacant eyes, and saw Miss Cornelia deathly white

and staring in horror at the paper. "Is it?" she said. "It must be.

What a dispensation! So young, too."

"Auntie," said Elizabeth, impatiently, "why don't you say what it is?"

"I am afraid he was very ill prepared," said Miss Cornelia, apparently

talking to herself and oblivious of her niece's presence. But suddenly

she seemed to realize it and placed her hand over the paper. "My dear,

don't look at this yet," she faltered. "You--it will be a shock,

Elizabeth. Prepare yourself."

Elizabeth did not wait to hear more, but went to her and seized the

paper from her hand. The headline told, in large type, how Paul

Halleck, the prominent young singer, had died the evening before of a

mysterious draught of poison, which had been sent to him by mail.

There followed in smaller type the details of the affair, but

Elizabeth did not read them. She sank into the nearest chair and sat

staring before her with dilated eyes, that seemed to express less

surprise or terror than a sort of awe, as at some unexpected

manifestation of Providence.

"It was I who killed him," she said. She spoke in a dull, dream-like

way, not in the least conscious, as it seemed, of anything

extraordinary in the words. Poor Miss Cornelia could form no other

conclusion than that she had suddenly lost her mind.

"Elizabeth, my darling," she remonstrated, "what do you mean?" But

Elizabeth was still staring before her vacantly, absorbed in her own

thoughts.

"And so it has happened!" she said, in a low voice, "at last!--when I

had given up hope!"--She was quite oblivious of her aunt's horror or

of the staring eyes of the maid, who stood listening, the coffee-pot

in her hand, her mouth wide open. But at that moment Miss Cornelia

suddenly remembered her presence and signed to her to leave the

room--an order obeyed reluctantly.

"Now, Elizabeth," Miss Cornelia faltered out, as the door closed, "do,

my darling, explain what you mean. It's quite absurd, you know, to say

that you had anything to do with this."

"I wished it," said Elizabeth, gazing at her with dull, expressionless

eyes. "I wished, I even prayed, that he might die. And my wishes

always come true--only it is in such a way that it does no good."

"But you can't," urged Miss Cornelia, in desperation, "you can't kill

people by _wishing_, Elizabeth. Of course, there are things that one

can't--feel as sorry for as one would like"--Her voice faltered, as

she thought of certain individuals connected with her own life, whose

death it had been hard to regard in the light of an affliction. "We

can't help our thoughts," she murmured, "we can only pray not to give

way to them."

"Ah, but I didn't," said Elizabeth. "I encouraged them. And now I

shall have remorse, I suppose, all my life." She sat pondering a

moment, while the expression on her face grew softer. "I am sorry he

is dead," she said, at last. "It does me no good now--and he seemed so

full of life the last time I saw him. But it was his fate, no doubt--a

fortune-teller told him he would die before the year was out. It was

his unlucky year, as well as mine. And the prediction has come

true--in both cases."

"But how did it happen?" urged Miss Cornelia. "Do read, Elizabeth, how

it was. Did he drink poison by mistake?"

Elizabeth took up the paper and read the story, which grew to be a

famous one in the annals of New York crime. Halleck had received on

New Year's Eve a package which contained a small hunting-flask of

sherry. There was no name or card with the present--if present it

_were_; nothing to identify the giver, except the hand-writing on the

package, which he did not recognize.

He suspected nothing, however, imagining the card to have been

forgotten, and accepted the flask as a belated Christmas present; but

kept it unopened, in the hope of discovering from whom it came. He had

brought it out and showed it the night before to some friends, and the

flask and the box in which it arrived were passed from one to the

other, but each disclaimed all knowledge of them.

"To me," said D'Hauteville, who happened to be present, "it looks like

a woman's handwriting, disguised to seem like a man's. Perhaps"--he

smiled--"it contains a love potion."

"Or a death potion," suggested another man, laughing.

"I'm not afraid," said the young singer, lightly, "of either

catastrophe." With a smile he poured some of the wine into a glass and

raised it to his lips. "To the health," he said, "of the mysterious

giver." He emptied the glass and put it down, observing that it must

be, after all, a woman's gift, since no man would have chosen such

poor wine. "Try it," he said, but by some fortunate chance no one did.

And in a few minutes Halleck was taken desperately ill, and died

before the hastily-summoned physician could save him.

This is, briefly put, the account which Elizabeth read, at first with

a strange sense of unreality, as if such tragedies, of which she had

often read before in the papers, could not possibly occur within the

circle of her own acquaintance. Then followed a growing horror, a

feeling of passionate remorse for her own indifference.

"Read it, auntie," she said, thrusting the paper into Miss Cornelia's

hand. "I--I must be alone to think it over." She went quickly and shut

herself in her room. But when there she did not lie down and cry, as

might have been best for her; she had not shed any tears since New

Year's Eve. She paced up and down, going over the whole thing in her

mind, imagining the details with a feverish vividness, struggling,

above all, with this irrational, yet terrible sense of guilt.

It _was_ irrational--this she realized even in her state of feverish

excitement. The vindictive wish which had crossed her brain would

never have gone beyond it and resolved itself into action. She would

not even--she knew this now--have been a passive factor in Paul's

death; she would have been the first to go to his aid, had she seen

him suffering. No selfish remembrance of her own gain would have

stopped her. And yet--and yet--with all her reasoning, her mind always

returned to the same point. She had wished for his death, and her

wishes had been fulfilled, too late for her own advantage, only as it

seemed, to add to her punishment.

The idea occurred to her all at once that she must go and look at his

dead body. It presented itself, in some irrational way, in the light

of an atonement. The fever in her blood, the beginning of an illness,

made the strained, hysterical thought seem natural and almost

inevitable. She was not conscious of doing anything unusual. Hastily,

she dressed herself, choosing instinctively a black gown and tying a

black veil over her face, and went out into the street, where the cold

air, which she had not faced for a week, blew refreshingly on her

burning cheeks. She walked all the way, rapidly, choosing unfrequented

avenues, and looking neither to the right nor the left, her mind

intent on the one object, yet with a strange relief in motion and the

intense cold. She reached Carnegie Hall in a surprisingly short time,

but here she encountered unexpected difficulties.

"Take you up to Mr. Halleck's studio?" said the elevator-man, looking

with surprise and suspicion at this veiled young woman, who made such

an extraordinary request. "I can't take you up. The police has charge,

and there ain't a soul allowed to go in but Mr. D'Hauteville."

Elizabeth was not in a mood to be gainsaid. She placed a coin in the

man's hand. "I must see him," she said, in a hoarse whisper. "If you

won't take me up, I'll walk. I am his wife," she went on, as he still

stared at her, wondering. "I have a right to see him."

"Well, it's the police that settles that," he rejoined, gruffly, but

still he took her up, reflecting that, after all, it was no business

of his. He brought the elevator to a stand-still, with a shake of the

head and an anxious look towards the fatal studio, but Elizabeth moved

towards it as if she had no doubt whatever of entering. And at the

same moment, Mr. D'Hauteville opened the door of his rooms on the same

landing, and came face to face with her.

"Miss Van Vorst!" he exclaimed, staring at her; then, in a lower

voice: "For Heaven's sake, don't come here. Halleck is dead. Haven't

you heard?"

"Yes, I--I have heard." She looked pleadingly at him. "Mr.

D'Hauteville," she said, "take me in to see him. I--I must see him. It

was such a shock. I am his wife, you know," she added. The

disclosure, which she had once so dreaded, fell from her lips

indifferently, as if it were a thing of small importance, compared

with the gaining of her purpose.

"His wife!" D'Hauteville fell back and stared at her incredulously.

Then his mind quickly grasped the explanation of facts which had

puzzled him. He looked at her and saw that she was suffering from

terrible distress and excitement. "Do you really wish to see him?" he

said. "It would be painful."

"Yes, I--I must see him." Elizabeth raised confidingly her troubled

eyes, and D'Hauteville apparently could not resist their appeal.

Slowly and reluctantly he unlocked the studio door and allowed

Elizabeth to enter. The hall was empty, but from behind the portière

at the end came the sound of voices. D'Hauteville cast an anxious

glance towards them, but he opened quickly another door, and led the

way into the bedroom, which was still and dark, and close with a

strange, oppressive atmosphere. D'Hauteville, treading softly, drew up

the shade. Then he fell back and turned his eyes away.

Elizabeth felt no fear, though her only recollection of death was

connected with a horrible moment in her childhood, when they had led

her in trembling to look at her father in his coffin. But now she felt

indifferent to any trivial terrors. She stood by the bedside looking

down at the dead man, and put out her hand and touched the curls which

clustered about his forehead. He was not much changed; the greatest

difference which death had made was in a certain look of dignity,

which his face had never worn in life. It was impossible, standing

there, to think of his faults, or of any harm that he had wrought in

her life. She only remembered that he had been her first

lover--nothing more.

A few moments passed, and then D'Hauteville pulled down the shades and

drew her gently from the room. The tears were falling fast behind her

veil, and the hand that rested against his was icy cold.

"I had better see you home," he said anxiously, but she shook her

head.

"No, no, thank you. You have been very kind, but I--I would rather

not. Mr. D'Hauteville," she said, raising piteous eyes to his

"who--who could have done it?"

"God only knows!" said D'Hauteville, with a sigh. "No one else, I

believe, ever will."

He had rung the bell, and they stood waiting for the elevator, when

she turned to him. "It was not I," she said, "don't ever think that it

was I." And at that moment the elevator stopped and she was borne

away, before there was time for further words. But D'Hauteville stood

paralyzed.

"For Heaven's sake," he asked himself, "why did she say that? Who

accused her?"

Elizabeth, as she went her way, was quite unconscious of the

impression her words had produced. Her head felt confused, and after

she left Carnegie there followed a blank interval, during which she

wandered aimlessly, but found herself at last, as if led by some

involuntary instinct, in the Park beside the lake, into which a few

weeks before she had thrown her wedding ring. Now, as before, it was

nearly covered with a thin coating of ice, yet there was a strip of

water visible, and upon this her eyes fastened with a thrill of

terrified fascination. She pictured it involuntarily, closing over

her, dragging her down, blotting out all thoughts, all feelings.... A

moment of agony, perhaps, and then? Rest, oblivion, an end of all

struggle, no more to-morrows to be faced, no more regrets.... The

thought of death, the one way out, the only remedy, swift and sure,

appealed to her with a force almost irresistible.

If only the water were not so cold!--In an instant there swept over

her, quite as inevitably, the natural, healthy reaction; the revulsion

against the icy pond, and all the weird, uncanny, frightful,

unpleasant associations that it conjured up. Ah, she had not the

courage!--not then, at least. She closed her eyes, shutting out the

strange fascination of the water gleaming in the pale chill sunlight,

and promising its sure and terrible relief--she closed her eyes and

turned resolutely away. A horror seized upon her of herself and of

loneliness, of the bleak desolation on every side. She hastened,

breathing heavily, towards the entrance of the Park, her hurried

foot-steps on the crisp, hard path sounding unnaturally loud in the

wintry silence.

_Chapter XXX_

Several weeks later the Halleck poisoning case was still, so far as

the general public was concerned, an impenetrable mystery. For a day

or two various clues were investigated, with a great appearance of

zeal; and then a lull fell upon the efforts of the police. Their final

investigations, if they made any, were conducted behind closed doors.

But no result appeared from their labors; the coroner's inquest was

postponed from week to week for lack of sufficient evidence. The

public grew impatient, and clamored that some one should be

arrested;--it did not seem greatly to matter whom. And then there

began to be strange rumors of influence exerted to conceal the truth,

of suspicion which pointed in such high quarters, that the police were

afraid to continue their search.

These rumors were still comparatively new when Eleanor Van Antwerp

took up one day a scandalous society journal--(one of those papers

which no one reads, but whose remarks, in some mysterious way, every

one hears about)--and came across a paragraph, which seemed to her at

once insulting and inexplicable.

"They say"--it began with this conventional formula--"that certain

highly dramatic developments are to be expected soon in the famous

poisoning case. The evidence that the District Attorney has collected

is now said to be complete and to inculpate rather seriously a

well-known beauty. The lady is related, though on the father's side

only, to one of our old Dutch houses, and was introduced to society,

where she was before entirely unknown, by the representative of

another old Knickerbocker family. Under such circumstances her success

was certain. Not content with taking the town by storm, she made

special capture of a certain prominent society man and eligible parti,

to whom her engagement was announced. This gentleman has, however,

according to latest reports, left the forlorn beauty and fled to parts

unknown."

What did it mean? The hot, indignant color rushed to Mrs. Bobby's

cheek, and then, retreating, left her deadly pale. She took the paper

to her husband, and pointing out the offending paragraph, she stood

beside him as he read it, her dark eyes fixed intently upon his face,

and seeing there, to her dismay, more indignation than surprise.

"Well," she said, as he looked up at the end. "Tell me--what does it

mean?"

"It--the editor of that infernal thing ought to be horsewhipped," he

said, fiercely.

She put the remark aside as irrelevant. "Why, that should have been

done long ago. But what does it mean?" she persisted, holding to the

main point.

He put the paper down with a sigh. "It means what it says, Eleanor,

I'm afraid," he said.

She stared at him, a shade paler, while the dread in her eyes grew

more pronounced. "Means what it says?" she repeated. "Then it isn't

merely a wild concoction of the kind they're always inventing?"

"It's more than that, I'm afraid." Bobby rose and began to pace up and

down. "They do say nasty things," he said, apparently addressing the

walls, or anything rather than his wife.

Her eyes followed him with an intense anxiety, as her white lips

barely framed the question: "At the clubs?"

He nodded. "Yes, there, and--at other places besides. At the District

Attorney's, for instance"--

"You don't mean?"--she began incredulously.

"That they suspect her? Yes."

Mrs. Bobby sat down as if her strength suddenly had failed her. "But

that's absurd--impossible!" she said, after a moment.

"Perhaps; but--it's the impossible that some times happens." Mrs.

Bobby was silent in incredulous horror; and he went on, after a pause:

"You see, she's in a confoundedly unpleasant position. There are all

kinds of queer stories going the round. They say now that she was

secretly married to Halleck; that he had some kind of power over her,

at least; and then having every motive to get rid of him, being

engaged to Gerard"--

"Bobby," said his wife, in a horrified tone "how can you repeat such

disgusting gossip?"

"I'm only telling you what they say," said Bobby, apologetically.

"I don't wish to know it." Bobby held his peace. "Why should she have

any motive?" said his wife, after a moment's reflection "when her

engagement was broken?"

"They say--but I thought you didn't wish to know."

"I don't, but I suppose, I must know. What do they--these disgusting

people--say?"

"They think that Gerard found out something which made him break the

engagement. As for the poison, that was sent before, you know"--

"Bobby," said his wife, with a little cry, "you don't mean to suggest

that she--that Elizabeth Van Vorst"--She paused as if at a loss for

words, and Bobby concluded the sentence.

"Sent the poison?" he said, quietly. "No, I don't suggest it--not for

a second; I don't _believe_ it, even," he cried, with sudden emphasis,

"but there are other people who--who do both."

"Then they must be fools." Bobby made no reply. "Where," she said, in

a moment, "do they suppose she got it--the poison?"

"That they don't know--as yet; but they know--or they think they

do--where she got the flask. There's a shop in Brooklyn where they

sell others like it"--he stopped.

"Well," she said, "what of it? I daresay there are a good many shops

where they sell them."

"The man who keeps this particular shop, said, I believe, that he sold

one on the twenty-third of December to a young woman thickly veiled,

rather tall and with wavy red hair."

"Her hair isn't red," said Mrs. Bobby, quickly.

"Some people call it so, you know," said Bobby. She was silent.

"Hundreds of women have that sort of hair," she said, presently. "Half

the actresses in town"--

"He said it seemed to him natural."

"How should he know?" said Mrs. Bobby, contemptuously. "And why on

earth should she choose a place like Brooklyn? I don't think she ever

went there in her life."

"She seems," said Bobby, gently, "to have done a great many things

that you--didn't think of, Eleanor." And again his wife fell silent.

"Have they any other evidence?" she asked, after thinking a moment,

"or what they call evidence? I might as well know the worst."

"They have her letters, which were found among Halleck's papers--she

told him to burn them, but he didn't. They were signed 'E. V. V.' One

of them was about her engagement to Gerard--it seemed he had

threatened her, and she offered him money to keep him quiet; the other

was just a line, asking him to meet her in the Park. It's evident that

she was afraid of him and had to keep him supplied with funds. She

sold all her jewelry, they say, to do it."

"Ah--her jewelry!" Mrs. Bobby drew a long breath. "That is what she

did with it, then," she remarked, involuntarily.

Bobby turned to her sharply. "You noticed, then," he said, "that she

didn't have it?"

"Of course. There were her pearls, which she never wore last summer;

the watch I gave her, too--I used to feel hurt that she never carried

it, but I never suspected--Oh, what a fool I was--what a fool! And I

who thought myself so clever in bringing about a match between her and

Julian!" She stopped and suddenly burst into tears. "I made a nice

failure of it all, didn't I?" she said. Then in a moment, her mood

changed, and she turned upon Bobby indignantly. "Why didn't you tell

me all this before?"

"I didn't want to tell you," said Bobby, slowly, "a moment sooner than

was necessary. Personally, I don't see the use of having all this

exploited--as a matter of fact, I'd pay a good deal to have it kept

quiet; partly for your sake, and partly because--well, I like

Elizabeth. She may not have behaved well, but I don't think she

deserves to be made conspicuous in this way. I don't mind confessing

that I've done what I could to arrest the zeal of the police, but I'm

sorry to say, without success."

"You don't mean," she said incredulously, "that they refused money?"

"Well, the new District Attorney is very zealous," Bobby explained,

"and, between ourselves, I think he wants the éclat of a sensational

case. To put a young society woman in prison, against the efforts of

all her friends, shows Roman stoicism,--or so he thinks."

"But you don't believe," said his wife, piteously, "you don't think it

could come to that, Bobby?"

"To prison?" he said. "I don't know, Eleanor--upon my word I don't

know." And he began again thoughtfully to pace up and down.

"What did Gerard say," he asked presently, "when he wrote to you

before he sailed?"

"It was just a hurried note, hard to make out. He said the engagement

was broken by her."

"Of course he'd _say_ that. What did she tell you?"

"That it was his wish, but he was not to blame, and she would tell me

more some other time. She looked so unutterably wretched that I

couldn't ask any questions just then."

"Ah," said Bobby, softly. "I don't believe, poor child! that it was

her doing, Eleanor."

"If it was Julian's," she said, "he must have had some good reason."

And with that they both fell into thoughtful silence.

"I don't see," was her next objection, uttered musingly, "I don't see

how they ever thought of Elizabeth in the first place. It seems such a

wildly improbable idea."

"It certainly does," Bobby agreed. "Then Elizabeth, poor child, as it

happens, rather put the idea into their heads herself. It seems that

she went to the studio the day after the poisoning and insisted upon

seeing him. She said she was his wife. D'Hauteville saw her, I

believe, but he said nothing about it. It was the elevator man who

told the story--he took her up and he heard D'Hauteville call her by

her name. He says that D'Hauteville took her into the studio, and when

she came out she was crying. And the man vows he heard her say 'I

didn't do it, don't think I did it,' or something of the kind."

"Why, I never," broke in Mrs. Bobby, "heard anything so extraordinary.

The man must have been drinking. It's impossible that Elizabeth could

have done such a thing. Why, it was that day--that day"--she paused

and thought--"that day after the murder," she continued, triumphantly,

"I remember distinctly going to see her in the afternoon, and she was

ill in bed with grippe, and her temperature very high."

"I can believe that," said Bobby, rather grimly, "after what she went

through in the morning. For I'm afraid there's not much doubt,

Eleanor, that it's true. One of the detectives, too, saw her pass

through the hall, and I don't think that D'Hauteville denies it. They

want him to testify at the inquest, but so far, they can't get him to

say one thing or another."

"He would deny it, of course, if it were false," said Mrs. Bobby, in a

low voice. Her husband bent his head. "Well," she said, rallying,

"after all, I don't see anything in that. It would be pretty stupid,

if she were really guilty, to defend herself before she was accused.

No one but a fool would have done that, and the person who sent that

poison couldn't have been a fool. And she wouldn't have gone near the

studio; that's the last thing the real culprit would have done."

"That's what I say," said Bobby. "It doesn't seem on the face of it

the act of a guilty woman. But they have some theory of hysterical

remorse, and there is other evidence I haven't heard which fits into

that. They say that when she heard that it had really happened she

lost her head completely. There have been such cases, you know. Oh,

and then another thing. They're comparing the handwriting on the

package with the letters"--

"The letters?" broke in Mrs. Bobby, anxiously.

"Yes, that I told you of, you remember--written to him--they've got

experts examining them now."

"Ah, well, if the experts have got hold of the case," said Mrs. Bobby,

resignedly, "we might as well give up hope. They'd swear away any

person's life to prove a theory."

"Well, at least," said Bobby, "it's the life of a young and beautiful

girl. That really seemed to me, when I heard all this, the only hope.

Even handwriting experts are human." But his wife only sighed

despairingly.

"I think," she said, after awhile, "I must go to Elizabeth. I haven't

seen her for several days, and she mustn't think that her friends are

giving her up."

"You won't--tell her anything?" asked Bobby, anxiously.

"Do you think she doesn't know?"

"She would be the last person, in the natural order of events, to hear

of it."

"Then I shall say nothing," said his wife, after a moment's

reflection. "You wouldn't, would you?" she added, as she caught an odd

look in her husband's eyes.

"I--I don't know." Bobby seemed to reflect. "If--if she were to go

abroad just now," he said, doubtfully, "it might not be a bad plan."

"Bobby!" Mr. Van Antwerp's wife faced him indignantly. "You wouldn't

have her--run away from all this? You wouldn't have her frightened by

anything those people can threaten?" Eleanor Van Antwerp's dark eyes

sparkled, she held her head proudly. Her husband looked at her half in

doubt, half in admiration.

"You would face it?"

"Yes, if it cost me my life."

The look of admiration on Bobby's face brightened and then faded to

despondency. "Ah, well, you are right--theoretically, of course,

but--would Elizabeth, do you think, have the same courage? Or, if she

had, could you, knowing what you do, take the responsibility of

allowing her to face it?"

This was the doubt--the horrible doubt, which troubled Mrs. Bobby as

she drove to Elizabeth's home, and at the thought of it her heart

failed her. Her husband had judged her rightly--she could be braver

for herself than for others. Would it not be better, after all, to

suggest to the Misses Van Vorst the desirability of a trip abroad? She

looked thoughtfully out of the carriage window. It was a bleak

February day, and people in the street had their coat-collars turned

up against the chill east wind. The climate of New York at this time

is detestable; a change would do any one good. She would go herself to

the Riviera and take Elizabeth with her.

Mrs. Bobby had hardly reached this conclusion before the carriage

stopped in front of the quiet apartment house in Irving Place where

the Van Vorsts were spending the winter. It was an old-fashioned house

with an air of sober respectability, that seemed to make such wild

thoughts as filled Mrs. Bobby's brain peculiarly strained and

improbable, like the hallucinations of a fevered brain. It was a

shock, keyed up as she was to the tragic point, to enter the peaceful

little drawing-room with its bright coal fire and general air of

comfort, and to find Elizabeth prosaically engaged in looking over

visiting-cards and invitations. And yet Mrs. Bobby was shocked by the

change in her appearance, which every day made more apparent. Her face

was haggard, there was a deep purple flush in her cheeks; her lips

were dry and feverish, there was an odd, strained look in her eyes.

The hand she held out to her visitor burned like fire.

"I'm so glad you came in," she said, with a wan smile. "I've been

looking over these stupid things and my head aches. You see, I've

neglected my social duties shamefully--not sending cards, or even, I'm

afraid, answering some of my invitations. People must think me

horribly rude."

"Oh, they know you've been ill," Mrs. Bobby answered vaguely. She sat

down, all the wind taken out of her sails, and stared wonderingly at

Elizabeth. How could she--how could she look over visiting-cards and

talk about invitations, with this terrible danger hanging over her

head? Was it possible that she had no suspicions? And yet--did not

her eyes betray her? But Mrs. Bobby could not think of any way of

introducing the subject of which her mind and heart were full, and

there was silence till Elizabeth spoke again.

"It's odd, isn't it," she said languidly, "that Mrs. Lansdowne hasn't

asked me to her ball. Have you cards for it?"

"I--I believe so."

"Well, she has left me out," said Elizabeth. Mrs. Bobby started and

looked at her with some interest. "I suppose she thinks," Elizabeth

went on, "I--I'm not much of an addition just now. I certainly am not,

to look at." She laughed a little, in a feeble way. "Of course I

shouldn't go," she added, "but it isn't nice to be--left out."

"Perhaps it's a mistake," suggested Mrs. Bobby, not very impressively.

She was quite convinced to the contrary.

"Perhaps," Elizabeth acquiesced, "but if so, several other people have

done the same thing. The Van Aldens never asked me to their dance, and

I haven't had an invitation to a dinner for weeks. People forget one

quickly in New York, don't they?" And she made another painful attempt

at a laugh.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Bobby, "they think you don't want to go."

"I don't," said Elizabeth, "but they might at least give me the

opportunity of refusing." And then there was a pause, in the midst of

which Miss Joanna entered.

"Oh, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said, "how glad I am to see you! Do tell

Elizabeth that she ought to be in bed. You can see for yourself she

has fever. It is the grippe, of course--she has never really got over

it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Bobby, looking doubtfully at Elizabeth, "it is the

grippe, of course."

"The grippe is a convenient disease," said Elizabeth, in a low tone,

"it means--so many things." She took up a sheet of paper and began to

write hastily. "It does me good," she said "to employ myself. And I

can't stay in bed--it drives me wild." Miss Joanna, as if weary of

expostulation, moved to the window.

"Yes, I declare," she announced, in the tone of one who makes a not

unexpected discovery, "there are those men again. Every time I look

out, one or other of them seems to be watching the house."

"Watching the house?" repeated Mrs. Bobby, startled.

"Yes, that's what it looks like, at least. And the other day, when I

went out, one of them stared at me so--most impertinent. I declare, if

it goes on, we shall have to make a complaint. And one of them

followed Elizabeth--didn't he, my dear?"

"I thought he did," said Elizabeth, indifferently, "but I didn't

notice much. I have thought several times lately that there were

people following me. Perhaps it is because my head feels so queer."

"What do the men look like?" asked Mrs. Bobby.

"Oh, quite respectable," said Miss Joanna. "They don't look like

beggars, certainly. Cornelia thought they looked rather like

detectives--she said they made her feel nervous; but that, of course,

is quite ridiculous."

"Quite ridiculous," echoed Mrs. Bobby. To herself she was saying, "Ah,

that trip abroad!"

"Eleanor has an invitation for Mrs. Lansdowne's ball, auntie," said

Elizabeth, suddenly changing the subject, which did not seem to

interest her, by the introduction of one that evidently rankled in her

mind. "She thinks it is odd I wasn't asked. I told you," she went on,

with a bitter smile, "that people are giving me up since my engagement

was broken off."

"But that is nonsense," remonstrated Miss Joanna, in distress. "Tell

her," she said, turning pleadingly to Mrs. Bobby, "that that isn't

so."

Mrs. Bobby started up and took Elizabeth's hand. "I don't know," she

said, speaking with strange earnestness, "who gives you up, Elizabeth

dear, and I don't care. I never will. Remember that, dear child. I

will stand by you whatever happens." And then, as if conscious of

having said too much, or fearful perhaps of saying more, Mrs. Bobby

swept hastily from the room, leaving her hearers petrified.

Miss Joanna was the first to speak. "How very strange she was!" she

said, in a low voice. "What--what do you think she meant?"

Elizabeth was staring vacantly at the door, but at her aunt's words

she turned.

"I don't know," she said, "what she meant, but one thing I

understand--that my social career is ended." With a little pale smile,

she swept aside the cards of invitation, locked them into a drawer and

left the room.

_Chapter XXXI_

Mrs. Bobby regained her carriage, and consulting her engagement book,

she ordered her coachman to drive her to the house of one of her

friends, whose "day at home" it was. It was a sudden resolution. She

had gone about very little that winter, since she had no longer the

incentive of chaperoning Elizabeth, and had not paid a visit for

weeks, on the plea of mourning for an uncle. But now she set her teeth

and said to herself that she must mingle with the world to find out,

if possible, what the world was saying.

Was it fancy, or did she distinguish, as she stood in the hall of Mrs.

Van Alden's house leaving cards, amidst the hum of voices in the

drawing-room, words that bore upon her own fevered anxiety? "Shocking

affair," and "so she is really involved in it"--surely she heard those

sentences. And then the conversation ceased abruptly as the butler

drew aside the portière and she stood for a moment on the threshold.

Her eyes were bright, her head erect; she glanced around taking mental

stock as it were of the company. Five or six women were seated about a

blazing wood fire, with an air unusual at functions of this kind of

having come to stay and of forming--or this again might have been her

fancy--a sort of council of justice. There was Mrs. Lansdowne, to

whose ball Elizabeth had not been invited; and there was Sibyl

Hartington, and one or two others who knew Mrs. Bobby and did not, as

it happened, love her very much. "Enemies," she thought, drawing her

breath sharply, "and discussing Elizabeth and me! It's the same

thing--I'm sure I feel as if it were I under suspicion." Eleanor Van

Antwerp had certainly never known such a feeling before, but her

bearing had never been more instinct with the nonchalant confidence of

a woman who seems absolutely unconscious of her position, for the

reason that it has never been questioned.

"I seem to have interrupted the conversation," she observed, lightly,

after she had been rather nervously greeted and kissed by her hostess,

and had taken her place in the circle. "Some one was telling a very

interesting story--I caught fragments of it as I came in." She glanced

her eye round the group. "It was you, Kitty, I think," she said.

"Won't you--please--begin the story over again and tell it for my

benefit?"

"Kitty," thus appealed to, colored and bit her lip. "Oh, the story

isn't really worth repeating," she said, hastily. She had no wish to

offend Mrs. Van Antwerp, and was heartily wishing that she had not

spoken so loud. Sibyl Hartington helped her out by observing, with her

placid smile:

"It's a story about a friend of yours, my dear Eleanor, so Kitty is

afraid to tell it."

"About a friend of mine?" said Mrs. Bobby, and she opened her eyes

very wide. "Then there's all the more reason," she said, decidedly,

"why I should hear it."

Her glance challenged the group, but no one spoke and at last the

hostess interposed. "My dear Eleanor, I'm sorry you should have heard

anything about it. We were only talking about poor Elizabeth Van

Vorst, and regretting that there is all this unfortunate gossip about

her. For my part, I don't believe there is a word of truth in what

they say, but it is certainly--uncomfortable."

"It makes it hard to know what to do," said Mrs. Lansdowne, a woman

with a deep bass voice and an air of being not so much indifferent to,

as unconscious of other people's feelings. "I couldn't for instance

ask Miss Van Vorst to my ball while there are these queer rumors about

her. I was sorry to leave out any friend of yours, Mrs. Van Antwerp;

but if a young woman gets herself talked about, no matter how or why,

I can't encourage her--it's against my principles. Let the girl behave

herself, I say, and keep out of the papers. I'm sure that's simple

enough."

"It's not always so simple," said Mrs. Bobby, and though the indignant

color had rushed into her cheeks, her tone was seraphic, "not so

simple for every one as it is for your daughters, Mrs. Lansdowne." A

subdued smile as she spoke went the round of the circle. Fortunately

Mrs. Lansdowne was not quick in her perceptions.

"No, it's true," she admitted, "my daughters have had unusual

advantages. I can't expect every one to come up to the same standard.

But one has to draw the line somewhere, and when a girl has done such

queer things as Miss Van Vorst, there seems nothing for it but to drop

her."

"But what--what has poor Elizabeth done?" asked Mrs. Bobby, with eyes

of innocent wonder, and again there followed an awkward silence.

"Well, you know, Eleanor, they tell very queer stories," the hostess

said at last, deprecatingly. "I never pay any attention to gossip, but

these things are sometimes forced upon one. Haven't you seen that

thing in _Scandal_?"

"I don't," said Mrs. Bobby, unmoved, "read '_Scandal_,' Mary."

"And _Chit Chat_," chimed in some one else. "There was a long

paragraph in _Chit Chat_. It seems that she was mixed up in some way

in that dreadful poisoning case. They say that she was actually

married to that young Halleck."

"At the same time that she was engaged to Julian Gerard," said Mrs.

Hartington, with her calm smile. "It's no wonder that he, poor man,

when he found it out, got out of the affair as best he could."

Mrs. Bobby looked steadily at the speaker. "As a friend of Mr.

Gerard's, Sibyl," she said, "I can state on his authority that the

engagement was broken by Miss Van Vorst."

Sibyl Hartington's calm, faintly amused smile again rippled across her

face. "I never doubted, my dear Eleanor," she said, "that Mr. Gerard

is a gentleman."

The entrance of another visitor at that moment was not altogether

unwelcome to Mrs. Bobby, who felt that she was being worsted; but the

new-comer immediately continued the same subject.

"I've just been hearing the most extraordinary news," she exclaimed,

sitting on the edge of her chair, and too much excited to notice Mrs.

Bobby's presence, "I heard it at luncheon. They say that Elizabeth Van

Vorst"--But here the speaker suddenly caught sight of Mrs. Bobby, and

stopped short.

"Well, what do they say?" said Mrs. Bobby, with rather a bitter smile.

"Don't keep us in suspense, Miss Dare, and above all, don't mind my

feelings. I would rather know the worst of this."

"Well, I don't believe there is any truth in it. They say that she is

really seriously implicated in that dreadful poisoning case; that the

police have letters she wrote to Halleck, and all sorts of unpleasant

things. But of course it's impossible--a girl like that, whom we all

know!"

"Do we?" said Mrs. Hartington, softly. "Do you think that we, any of

us, know much about her? You didn't, Eleanor, did you?"--turning to

Mrs. Bobby--"You just took her up in that charming, impulsive way of

yours--didn't you?--because people in the Neighborhood didn't have

much to do with her, and you felt sorry for her?"

Mrs. Bobby made a scornful little gesture. "You flatter me, Sibyl,"

she said. "I'm afraid I'm not so charitable as all that. I 'took up'

Elizabeth Van Vorst, as you say, because I liked her, and for no

other reason. It was for my own pleasure entirely that I asked her to

stay with me, and I have never regretted it."

Mrs. Hartington gave a barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders. "I

congratulate you," she said. "It was a rash action, some people

thought at the time. A girl whom you knew so slightly, whose mother

was such an impossible person--or at least, so they say. I don't of

course," she went on, in her soft, drawling tones, "know much about it

myself, but it does make all this gossip seem less extraordinary--doesn't

it?"

"Why, yes, of course, that accounts for it," said Mrs. Lansdowne,

looking relieved. "That sort of thing runs in families. A girl who has

a queer mother is sure to be queer herself and get herself talked

about."

"I never thought her very good style," some one who had not yet spoken

now found courage to observe. "Her hair is so conspicuous. I never

could understand why men seemed to admire her."

Mrs. Hartington raised her eye-brows. "Ah, the men!" she said, with

serene scorn. "She is exactly the sort of girl who would appeal to

men."

Mrs. Bobby felt that she had stayed as long as the limit of human

endurance would permit. She rose to her feet, her cheeks were flushed,

her eyes brilliant, her voice rang out with crystal clearness. "It's

hardly necessary for me to tell you," she said, "that Elizabeth Van

Vorst is my most intimate friend. I love her very dearly and always

shall. What her mother may have been is no affair of mine. But as for

the men liking her"--she turned suddenly to Mrs. Hartington--"they do

like her, Sibyl, and I think they show good taste. But if you mean the

inference you seem to draw from that"--she paused and drew her breath

quickly--"why, it's not very flattering, I think, to either men or

women."

Mrs. Hartington gave a short little laugh. "My dear, I'm not drawing

inferences one way or another. I merely stated a fact--complimentary,

one might think, to your protegée. But you take things so

seriously!"--She drew herself up with an air of some annoyance.

Mrs. Bobby's hands were tightly locked together inside her muff, she

faced the group appealingly, her dark eyes wandering from one to the

other. "Certainly, I take this thing seriously," she said, and there

was a thrill of earnestness in her voice which moved more than one of

her hearers. "It's no light matter for me to hear my friend spoken

of--like this. I had Elizabeth Van Vorst with me all last winter, I

feel as if I knew her like my own sister. I believe in her implicitly,

no matter what any one may say. And if--if some of you"--instinctively

her eyes fastened upon one or two whom she felt she was carrying with

her--"if you would try to think the best, give her the benefit of the

doubt, show that women can stand by one another--sometimes"--Her voice

faltered and she broke off suddenly; there were tears glistening in

her eyes as she held out her hand to her hostess. "Forgive me, Mary,"

she said. "I don't want to make a scene. But I can't help feeling

strongly, and in this case I want every one to know exactly how I

feel." And with that she left the room quickly before any one could

speak, yet conscious as she went of a subtle wave of sympathy, which

seemed to have made itself felt since her entrance.

"But it's useless--useless," she said sadly to her husband when she

got home. "You might as well try to stop the course of a torrent as

fight against the world's disapproval, when it is once roused against

any poor, defenceless girl. And it isn't as if she were a great

personage, or even as if she were still engaged to Julian! They've

nothing to gain by standing by her. Yet there were one or two, I

think, even of those women this afternoon, who felt with me. And at

least"--she consoled herself a little--"at least they shall see that

she has friends!"

"She'll need them, poor girl. The--the inquest--I've just heard--is

coming off next week." He took up a paper knife and played with it,

while he stole a furtive glance at his wife. "I think you had

better--prepare Elizabeth," he said.

"Prepare her?" she repeated anxiously, as he paused.

"For some confoundedly unpleasant questions! Yes. Have you the

strength to tell her?" His eyes questioned her anxiously. She was

white to the lips, but she met them without flinching.

"One can always find strength."

"It's confoundedly hard, I know." Bobby began to pace up and down

helplessly. "You don't know how I hate to have you mixed up in all

this, Eleanor," he said. "I'd give anything to have you out of it.

Wouldn't it be better for you to go abroad for awhile?"

"And desert Elizabeth? My dear Bobby, you wouldn't have me do that?"

"Well, you can't help her, you know," he urged.

"I can show that I believe in her. And, thank Heaven! social position

does count for something. It may help me to fight Elizabeth's

battles."

"It doesn't count for much, unfortunately, before the law."

"Not theoretically, no," said his wife, sceptically. "But

practically--it counts with every one and everywhere. By the way," she

added, struck with a sudden idea, "what sort of man is the District

Attorney? I might ask him to dinner." And she looked prepared to send

the invitation on the spot.

"My dear Eleanor, I'm afraid it's too late for that now. The thing to

do now, since matters have gone so far, is to prove Elizabeth's

innocence, and for that, the first step is to prepare her, so that she

won't be taken unawares. Her aunts too--they must be told, I suppose.

Poor things, I believe it will kill them!"

"People don't die so easily. It would be more merciful, I sometimes

think, if they did." She sat and thought for a moment. "I think I had

better go there at once," she said, at last, nervously. "I couldn't

sleep to-night with this hanging over my head."

And so, for the second time that day, she drove to the Van Vorsts'

apartment, feeling that her unexpected appearance in itself must

prepare them for some calamity. And indeed the telling proved easier

than she feared. She saw Elizabeth alone, and sat holding the girl's

hand, trying by many tender circumlocutions to break the force of the

blow. But Elizabeth understood almost immediately.

"They think I sent the poison--is that it?" she said, going at once to

the point which her friend was approaching so carefully. "Well, that

isn't so strange. Sometimes I feel," she added, wearily, and putting

her hand to her head, "as if I had done it myself. I think I--I might

have done it."

"Elizabeth, Elizabeth, what do you mean?"

"Because I wished it, you know," Elizabeth went on to explain quite

calmly. "I was married to him, and I wished that he might die, so that

no one would ever know it, I didn't tell any one but Julian--I

wouldn't have told him if I could have helped it. That was the reason

he gave me up--because I told him that I had been secretly married all

the time. He was angry because I hadn't told him before."

"But," interrupted Mrs. Bobby, with intense anxiety, "you did tell

him, at last?"

"Yes, of course I told him," said Elizabeth, in surprise. "I told him

New Year's Eve. Why else should he have given me up?"

"Then," cried Mrs. Bobby, rising to her feet in her excitement, "that

seems to me an unanswerable argument. If you had--had expected Paul

Halleck's death, you certainly wouldn't have told Julian Gerard of

your marriage. That's clear as daylight. Oh, Elizabeth, how fortunate

that you told him!"

"Fortunate?" said Elizabeth, listlessly. "I don't see that it is very

fortunate, since he has given me up and will never forgive me."

"But it may save you." Elizabeth looked at her blankly. "Oh, my dear

child," cried Mrs. Bobby, "don't you understand that they suspect you

of--of the murder?"

"You don't mean that they would put me in prison?"

Mrs. Bobby only answered by her silence. Elizabeth sat staring at her

for a moment, then the color rushed into her white face, her eyes

flashed. "How would they dare do that," she cried, "when I am

innocent?"

"Of course you are," said Mrs. Bobby. "No one but a fool would think

otherwise. And we will prove it, never fear. But you mustn't talk any

more of this morbid nonsense about being guilty of his death and all

that. I know what you mean well enough, but the general public doesn't

understand such psychological subtleties. And besides, it's not true.

The guilty person had no thought of doing you a service--be sure of

that. Paul Halleck would have died, my dear, if you had never known

him. And now keep up a brave heart, Elizabeth. Your friends will stand

by you, and when all this is over--happily over, you will look back

upon it as a bad dream--nothing more."

Mrs. Bobby had almost talked herself into feeling the confidence she

expressed; but Elizabeth listened languidly, with drooping head. All

color had faded again from her face; it looked haggard, worn; her

hands plucked nervously at some fringe on her gown. When she wiped her

eyes at the last words, the smile she conjured up was piteous.

"It's a dream," she murmured, "that is lasting--a terribly long time."

_Chapter XXXII_

There is an old prison well in the heart of the city, which presents a

grim, mediæval front to the busy world outside. Elizabeth knew that it

existed, but had never seen it. She did not know even where it was,

till she found herself condemned to spend eight months within its

walls.

This was after the inquest, when the evidence had gone as she had seen

herself, very much against her. It was a curious feeling--this

bewildered perception of a net closing round her, whose meshes she had

woven herself. The verdict of the jury was hardly a surprise. And then

they broke to her gently the fact that bail was refused, and they

brought her across the Bridge of Sighs, the name of which gave her an

odd little thrill, into the prison.

The inmates of The Tombs are mostly of the lowest class. Such a

prisoner as Miss Van Vorst was disconcerting to wardens and matrons

alike. The situation was unprecedented, they hardly knew how to deal

with it.

Elizabeth was placed in one of the ordinary cells; no other indeed was

to be had. It was small and dark, and had for furniture a cot-bed, a

faucet set in the wall, and one cane chair. Light and air--what there

was of either--came in through the corridor, above and below the iron

grating which barred the doorway. There was no window.

Elizabeth, to whom an abundance of light and air had been one of the

necessities of life, who had a passion for space and luxury, for

fresh, dainty surroundings, looked about her in blank dismay. Yet she

said nothing. From the first she seemed to school herself to a silent

stoicism, which her friends called courage and her enemies

insensibility, and which may have been a combination of both. The last

two months had been crowded with so many startling events, so intense,

conflicting a tumult of thought and emotion, that her capacity for

acute suffering was for the moment exhausted.

Yet the mere physical horror that the cell inspired her with was very

great. The first time that the key was turned upon her, and she was

left entirely alone, with the twilight coming on, with no power to

free herself, nothing to do but wait for the matron's return, she felt

as she had felt once when for some childish offence, she had been

locked into a dark closet. Now as then she threw herself against the

door, trying with fierce, unreasoning efforts to force the lock,

uttering hoarse cries for help. Then the door had been quickly opened,

her aunts had let her out with remorseful tears, and the experiment

had never been repeated. Now no help came to her, and she was left to

adapt herself to the situation as best she might. The struggle left

deep marks on her young face, a look in her eyes which they never

afterwards lost.

There were many ways in which the prison routine was softened in her

favor. Social distinctions count, as Mrs. Bobby had said, with every

one and everywhere. Money is powerful, even in The Tombs. The warden

and the other officials reaped in those days a harvest of gold coins

from Mrs. Bobby.

A more comfortable bed, a hand-mirror, all sorts of forbidden

luxuries, found their way into Elizabeth's cell. Neither warden nor

matron apparently recognized their existence. She was permitted to

receive her visitors alone, to have a light in her cell after dark, to

walk for an hour a day in the corridor or the court. At these times

she would see those other women, her fellow-prisoners, huddled

together in an abject group, and feel thankful that at least she was

not obliged to mingle with them. Her meals were served to her in her

cell, and she could order what she wanted. Her friends sent her

constantly an abundance of fruit and flowers.

The people who came to see her, and there were many of them, used to

go away wondering at her calmness. They went prepared for tragedy, and

Elizabeth received them as she might in her own drawing-room. They

noticed no change in her, except that her head had never been held so

proudly, and she had never looked so pale. But there were no

confidences, no tears, no consciousness apparently of the

extraordinary state of things. Even to her aunts, even to Eleanor Van

Antwerp, she maintained this attitude of proud reserve. They could

only guess at the thoughts which lay beneath it. There were times,

indeed, when she did not think, when her brain would seem dazed. In

those days she would read eagerly all the books that people brought

her; read them through from beginning to end, but she had never any

idea of what they were about.

There was one form of reading which no one suggested, which she did

not, apparently, think of herself. No one brought her a newspaper, and

she never asked to see one. Perhaps she did not realize how much her

case was discussed, perhaps she realized it only too well. Her aunts

were thankful for her lack of curiosity. They could not themselves

open a paper, or enter a street-car, without an agony of dread as to

what they might see or hear.

For the yellow journals, of course, were exploiting the affair--it was

Mrs. Bobby's opinion, indeed, that it had been started originally on

their account, for the enlivenment of a dull season. This may or may

not be true; but certainly they made the most of it. They published

Elizabeth's picture, and long accounts of her conquests. There were

pictures, too, of her grandmother, that stately beauty whose fame was

traditional, and of old Van Vorsts who had held important offices, and

served city and state with credit in colonial and revolutionary times.

Then, by contrast, there were accounts of her mother's past and her

mother's kindred through several generations of moral and social

disrepute. The Neighborhood was overrun by disguised reporters who

made copious notes of local items, and took photographs of the Van

Vorst Homestead, of the village, of Bassett Mills and even of the

church--thereby causing the Rector's wife nervous spasms in her

anxiety lest any of Elizabeth's moral perversions should be laid to

the account of the religious teaching that she had received. Bassett

Mills was all a-flutter in its excitement over this gratuitous

advertisement. But in the Neighborhood--the staid, aristocratic old

Neighborhood--there was a feeling of humiliation, a presentiment that

it could never recover from the disgrace of such notoriety.

And yet, in spite of all discredit, what a subject for

conversation--in the Neighborhood as well as Bassett Mills! Nothing

else was talked of at the various tea-parties, of which so many had

never been given before. People who had guests took them over on

Sunday afternoons to the Homestead, and wandered about the grounds

relating the family history, while the strangers stared with interest

at the old house, and the horse-shoe on the door. There was a dreary

look about the place for the Misses Van Vorst were not coming back

that summer, and the old gardener left in charge had not the heart

under the circumstances to keep it in order. Grass grew in the

gravel-walks, the flowers in the garden hung their heads, the foliage

was sadly in need of clipping. A shadow seemed to brood over house and

grounds, as in the day of old Madam Van Vorst.

In town, where there were more things to talk about, the great

poisoning case still took precedence of all other subjects, and

society was divided on account of it into warring camps. There were

those--a very large number--who followed Mrs. Hartington's lead, and

spoke of Elizabeth as a sort of adventuress, who had thrust herself

into circles which she had no right to enter; a party which disowned

her entirely and believed implicitly in her guilt. But there was

another party, smaller perhaps but not less influential, which took

uncompromisingly the opposite side. The people who composed it were

friends, many of them, of Mrs. Van Antwerp, and there were others who

had cared for Elizabeth for her own sake, and again others to whom the

romantic facts of the case appealed irresistibly, inducing them to

espouse her cause regardless of reason. These all spoke of her as a

suffering martyr and regarded her imprisonment as an outrage. They did

not discuss the evidence, but met all doubts with the one unanswerable

argument of their own intuitions.

But the first side had in point of logic, so much the best of it! This

conviction intruded itself reluctantly on Eleanor Van Antwerp's mind,

as she looked up from an exhaustive summary of the case for the

prosecution. The article presented, in clear, remorseless details, all

the links in the terrible chain of evidence--her hasty marriage, and

then her repentance; her efforts to buy off her husband; the trouble

she had to supply him with money; her evident fear of his betraying

her to Gerard; her refusal to name her wedding day, till she had in

sheer desperation decided on the murder; then when the thing was at

last accomplished, her sudden remorse, her strange actions; the rumor

that she had in the first excitement confessed her guilt before

witnesses; the description too, of the woman who had bought the

flask, and which fitted Elizabeth exactly in height, coloring and

general appearance; the resemblances which the experts were said to

have discovered between her letters and the handwriting on the

package--never was chain more strongly forged! And what, the article

further demanded, had her friends to offer in rebuttal but her social

position, her youth and her beauty?

"It's not much, certainly," Mrs. Bobby's anxiety admitted. "And yet a

good deal, too," her aristocratic instincts involuntarily responded;

"and will have their weight with the jury," her cynicism added. But

then again despair overwhelmed her, and she put the unavailing

question: "Bobby, is there--do you think there is any hope?"

Bobby stared back at her, his face hardly less white than hers.

"God only knows, Eleanor! If she were just a man, or even an ordinary

woman, I should say 'no;' but for a young girl, there's always a

chance. Let her"--he dropped his hand on the table beside him with a

deep sigh--"let her look as pretty as she can. It seems to me about

the only hope."

"She won't look pretty," his wife returned, with a little sob. "She is

just the shadow of her old self; if she stays in that place much

longer, I believe it will kill her. Bobby," she cried, with a sudden

burst of indignation, staring up at him with tragic eyes, "if that

child dies--there, it will be murder! And yet you say the law is

just!"

Bobby had said so much in the last few weeks in perfunctory defence of

the law that he was weary of the subject, and so he attempted no

further protestations, but watched his wife sadly as she walked

impatiently to and fro; a slight, childlike creature, her cheeks

flushed, her eyes brilliant with impotent anger, dashing herself as it

were against impenetrable barriers. Only once before in her life had

Eleanor Van Antwerp been confronted with an obstacle that did not

yield to her wishes. That was when the baby died, and she had resigned

herself to what she believed to be Divine Providence. But this seemed

mere human stupidity.

"If only men were not so logical!" she exclaimed, despairingly.

"Women, if they intended to get her off, would do it, no matter what

the evidence was; but men!--they are so bound hand and foot by their

sense of justice, their respect for law, and Heaven knows what! that

they are quite capable, even if they believe her innocent, of finding

her guilty, just because the evidence was against her."

"Well that's what they're supposed to do," Bobby put in,

deprecatingly, "they've got to abide by the evidence." It was the

twentieth time that he had made this explanation, and for the

twentieth time, she brushed it aside.

"What does it matter," she demanded, "about the evidence, when any one

with common-sense must _know_ the girl is innocent? But I see how it

is, Bobby," she went on, her lip quivering. "You don't really believe

in her the way that I do. You have doubts--at the bottom of your heart

you have doubts. Tell me the truth, and I'll try to forgive

you--_haven't_ you?"

She stopped before him, her dark eyes, fastened upon his, seemed to

read his soul, but he answered steadily: "Eleanor, upon my honor, I

believe in that child's innocence as you do. I'd give anything in the

world to get her off. (Yes, and I would," he added to himself "for

your sake, if she had committed twenty murders.")

She drew a long sigh of relief. "Oh, Bobby, you _are_ nice," she said,

gratefully. "You've been very good to me all this time--never once

saying 'I told you so,' when the whole thing has been all my fault for

not taking your advice."

"Your fault, you poor child! How do you make that out?"

"If I had never asked Elizabeth to stop with me," she said

tremulously, "all this wouldn't have happened. You warned me--don't

you remember?--and you were right. I've come to the conclusion, Bobby,

that you generally _are_ right and I wrong."

Her tone of submission was as edifying as it was surprising, but Bobby

with unwonted quickness cut it short. "Nonsense!" he said almost

roughly. "You were right in that case, as you generally are, and I was

wrong; and no harm would have come of it if Elizabeth--well, I don't

want to hit people when they're down," he said, apologetically "but if

she had only been frank with us from the first, all this wouldn't have

happened. My dear"--this in response to a reproachful look from his

wife--"I don't mean to be hard on her, but I can't hear you blame

yourself for what has been poor Elizabeth's own fault, helped out by

a most extraordinary train of circumstances."

"She was to blame, certainly," faltered his wife, reluctantly, "but I

can understand--I believe I should have done the same in her place."

"No, Eleanor," said Bobby, briefly and with some sternness, "you would

not."

"It's true," she admitted, "I don't think I could keep a secret if I

tried. But then neither apparently could Elizabeth--to the bitter end.

That is one thing I can't understand," she went on, "why you don't any

of you attach more importance to the fact that she told Julian

herself."

"Because," said Bobby, slowly, "we have only her own word that she did

so."

"But her aunts"--began Mrs. Bobby.

"They can't know what passed between them. What people think is that

he discovered the marriage and charged her with it. It seems

improbable that after deceiving him so long she should suddenly

repent. And of course he would shield her as far as possible, so his

version goes for nothing."

"All the same, I should like to hear it," said Mrs. Bobby decidedly.

"If I were Mr. Fenton, I should summon him at once as witness." (Mr.

Fenton was the counsel for the defence.)

"Why, Fenton thought of it," said Bobby. "He spoke about it to

Elizabeth, and she cried out 'Oh, not he--not he of all people' in

such a way that he--well, he thought he'd better not send for him, for

fear of discovering something that would go very much against us. It

did look badly, you know, that she should dread Gerard's evidence so."

Mrs. Bobby's reply to this was unexpected. "Is Mr. Fenton considered a

clever lawyer, dear?" she asked.

"The best that money can get," said Bobby, somewhat taken aback. "But

why, Eleanor?"--

"Oh, well--I hope he knows more about law than he does about women,

that's all. Now I say, send for Julian at once."

"Well, you know, Eleanor, I can't help thinking that if he knew of any

evidence in her favor he'd have turned up of his own accord before

this. It looks badly, I think--his staying away; as if he were afraid

of being questioned if he came."

Mrs. Bobby sat for a moment reflecting deeply, her brows knit. "I

don't believe," she said, suddenly, "that he knows a thing about it.

Where is he, do you know?"

"Some one saw him ages ago in London," said Bobby. "Goodness knows

where he is now. But in all events, he must have heard."

"I doubt it. It happened, you know, while he was on the ocean, and by

the time he had landed, the first excitement was over, and there was

nothing about it in the papers for a long time. So that, even if he

bought an American paper, he might not see anything about it, and the

foreign ones of course would have nothing--you know how little

interest they take in us over there. Oh, it might easily

happen--strange as it seems, that he has heard nothing."

"But why is it, do you think," said Bobby, "that Elizabeth doesn't

want him here?"

"My dear Bobby, how dull men are! Of course, she doesn't want to call

upon him in a time like this. She's too proud. But nothing will

prevent him--if I know him rightly--from coming at once, if there is

anything he can do to help her."

"Well, if you think it's any good, I'll send a detective after him,"

said Bobby, with the composure of one to whom money is no object.

_Chapter XXXIII_

The services of a detective proved imperative in finding Gerard. His

banks when applied to by cable, regretted to reply that they did not

know his address. He had left no directions to have his mail

forwarded. Apparently his one idea had been to efface himself and

break with some home ties. It was a proceeding which did not

altogether surprise Mrs. Bobby, who understood the phase of mind which

it indicated; but to Mr. Fenton it was proof positive of his own

suspicions, that Gerard dreaded to be summoned as witness on behalf of

the woman whom he had once loved.

"She is glad to have him out of the way," thought the astute lawyer to

himself. "No doubt he has evidence which she is afraid of. Yes, she

lied no doubt when she said she had told him herself of her marriage,

just as she lied when she said she couldn't remember what she had done

on the twenty-third of December. She remembered--I could see that

plainly--very well." The counsel for the defence was reluctantly

convinced of his client's guilt, but he had good hopes of saving her

nevertheless, though he did not think it was to be done by means that

were strictly legal. He said little and accepted Gerard's

disappearance with philosophy, even though he did not absolutely

discourage Bobby Van Antwerp from sending a detective on his track. It

could at least, the lawyer argued, do no harm, since he was quite

certain that Gerard however urgently summoned would not come. Bobby

lost heart and would have let the matter drop, but his wife's

influence again carried the day. The detective started, with urgent

directions from Mrs. Bobby to find the witness at any cost, and

equally urgent directions from Mr. Fenton by no means to find him,

unless his evidence were desirable.

Meanwhile the summer came and life in The Tombs assumed a different

phase.

The atmosphere in Elizabeth's cell grew unbearable, and the warden

allowed her to spend a large part of her time in the prison court.

Here, too, since the intense heat, the other women assembled for an

hour every day, and she was brought in actual contact with them for

the first time. The court was large, and she could sit on the bench

which the warden had placed for her in the shadow of the wall. And

yet, though she tried to, she could not ignore them; she found

herself, little by little, observing them, taking even some faint

interest in them. She grew to know them by name, and would talk to

some of them, asking timid questions, partly with an instinctive

desire to get away from her own thoughts, partly with the feeling that

they were human beings, in trouble like herself. There was a lurking

sympathy in her heart for even the most depraved. She would share with

them her fruit and flowers, or make little presents of one kind or

another, even though the matron, discovering this assured her that

they were in many cases quite unworthy of her kindness.

"They won't thank you for it, Miss," she said "they won't indeed.

They're just as likely as not to say the worst things of you behind

your back."

Elizabeth stared at her thoughtfully for a moment beneath knit brows.

"I don't know that I care about their thanking me," she said at last,

"and even if they're not worthy, that doesn't make it any the less

hard for them, does it?"

To the matron this sentiment had a taint of immorality and she drew

herself up primly. "Why, on that principle, Miss," she said, "there's

no use at all in good behavior." Her point of view was the correct

one, of course--at least for a prison official. But it was natural

that Elizabeth, in revolt against the hard judgment of the world,

should take the opposite side. And certainly the women, even the

roughest of them, seemed to be grateful in their own way for her

kindness, and respected absolutely the intangible barrier between

them. There were one or two, indeed, younger and more imaginative than

the rest, who would follow her with wistful eyes as she passed, or

flush in involuntary, awkward delight if she spoke to them; to whom

her presence in their midst appealed irresistibly, touching some

latent sense of romance, and lending a new interest to the prison

routine. There was something wraith-like, spiritual about her, as she

grew from day to day, more frail, her face more thin and wasted, her

eyes more unnaturally large and strained, and the shadows beneath them

deeper and darker. Her gowns, since the hot weather began, were always

white, unrelieved by color even at throat or belt. Only her hair made

a gleam of brightness, the more vivid for the pallor of her face and

the grayness of the prison walls.

It was this soft, wavy hair at which visitors to The Tombs looked most

curiously, recognizing one of the strong pieces of evidence against

her. There was a number of visitors to The Tombs, even on those hot

summer days; people who only stared at one prisoner and asked before

they left one question of the prison officials, which met the one

answer. The warden--a gruff old man, hardened by long contact with the

lowest offenders--seemed when his turn came to hesitate.

"Guilty, she?" he repeated, staring up at the questioner with his

shrewd old eyes. "Well, there ain't a guilty person in The Tombs--not

to hear them talk; but--she"--he paused a moment. "She never says

nothing; but--bless you"--carried beyond himself by an unwonted burst

of sentiment--"I'd as soon suspect an angel from heaven."

"Ah, he has had a large fee," the more cynical would observe as they

left, and it was true. But the canny old warden was quite capable of

accepting all the money in the world, and reserving the right to his

own opinion, which he had stated in this case with absolute honesty.

And it was shared, moreover, by the entire prison,--jailers and

criminals alike.

Elizabeth grew conscious of the general sentiment and it cheered her

more than its intrinsic value seemed to warrant. For it was based on

no tangible evidence, was the result of a hundred unconsidered,

unimportant words and actions, the effect of which, to those who had

not seen or heard them, it was hard to explain; and it could penetrate

little to the outside world. But she felt strangely indifferent to the

outside world. Her horizon was bounded by the prison walls.

One day, sitting dull and languid on her bench in the shadow of the

wall, she chanced to overhear a fragment of a conversation between the

warden and a visitor. They stood within the door of the office, and

their voices came to her distinctly. "I tell you," the warden said,

apparently bringing his argument to a conclusion, "they'll never put a

woman--let alone a young and pretty one like her--in the electric

chair."

"Ah, but if she's guilty,"--the visitor's voice demanded. And then,

with an odd grunt from the warden, they passed on. She could not hear

the rest.

But what she had heard thrilled her with a new, sharp pang of terror,

the reason of which she could not have explained. There was nothing in

the warden's assertion, nothing even in the visitor's protest. She

knew of course that there were people who believed her guilty, and the

man's words were reassuring rather than otherwise. Yet something in

them called up before her vividly for the first time the very danger

which he disclaimed. Yes, she was to be tried for her life! Incredible

stupidity!--how was it she had never realized it before?

There was after all nothing extraordinary, unprecedented in the idea;

it was one which had exercised over her in times past a curious

fascination. She remembered well having read a graphic account of the

last hours of a noted criminal, everything that he had said and done,

the way in which he had met his fate, his last words ... it all came

back to her with startling distinctness. She had tried at the time to

put herself in his place, to think how she would have felt.... It was

so futile, she had desisted from it at last with a smile at her own

absurdity, the healthy instincts of her warm young life asserting

themselves, as they generally did, against the occasional morbidness

of her imagination. Now, looking back on it, the whole thing seemed

one of those presentiments with which people doomed to misfortune are

visited.

Yet the idea was absurd, even now. There was no danger, for she was

innocent. That man was guilty--or so the papers said. She remembered

that he had protested his innocence--to the end. And perhaps he had

spoken the truth.

What did the papers say about her own case? The evidence against her

was strong--she had always vaguely known that. But--what was it the

man had said?--they'd never put a woman, guilty or innocent, in the

electric chair. But what woman would accept her life on such terms as

that? Elizabeth raised her head with that characteristic, proud little

motion which not all the humiliations of prison life had availed to

break her of entirely. "I would rather die," she said to herself, "I

would rather die."

And then she remembered how she had shrunk from death--that morning

months ago in the park. She felt again the intense physical repulsion,

the instinctive clinging to life, the dread of the unknown....

That evening when the younger matron--the one she liked the best--came

with her dinner, she put her through a series of questions, which

embarrassed the kind woman not a little. Had she ever, Elizabeth

demanded, seen people who were condemned to death and how had they

behaved? Did they seem frightened, or were they calm and brave? Were

they--did the matron really believe that they were guilty, beyond

possibility of doubt?

"Are innocent people ever condemned," asked the girl, sitting huddled

together on her bed and staring at the matron with haggard eyes.

"Surely there couldn't be--you don't suppose there could be--such a

terrible mistake?"

"I"--The matron's voice suddenly failed her, her eyes filled with

tears. "Heaven knows I hope not, Miss," she said and went out hastily.

Elizabeth sat still, staring before her. "She believes me

innocent--but she is afraid I will be found guilty." A little shudder

passed through her, in spite of the intense heat. And then again the

dull cloud of weary indifference descended upon her, and she said to

herself that she did not care.

But as time went on, she knew that this was false.

A few days later Mrs. Bobby came back, after spending a week in the

country much against her will. It seemed to her that Elizabeth looked

much worse than when she saw her last. She sighed as she realized,

more emphatically than ever, how much of the girl's beauty had left

her with that wealth of color and outline which had been its most

striking characteristic. Certainly any one who judged of her by the

famous picture, taken in her first bloom, would be wofully

disappointed now. There was only the soft sweep of the hair, and the

strange shadow in the eyes--of which the first premonition as it were

had somehow crept into the picture--but for these points of

resemblance one would hardly know her for the same woman.

"No," Mrs. Bobby reflected, "they won't acquit her for her beauty."

But aloud she talked cheerfully, giving the Neighborhood news--what

there was of it, skimming the cream of her letters from friends at

gayer places--profoundly uninteresting just then, and mocking the

scene about them with its frivolous incongruity--but what matter.

Anything to keep going the ball of conversation! But at last, in spite

of herself, there came a pause.

It was intensely hot. The sun beat down upon the rough uneven stones

which paved the prison court, it baked the wall against which the two

women leaned. Before their eyes there rose up sharply the walls of

the men's prison, and beyond a fragment of the Court-house, with which

the Bridge of Sighs formed a connecting link, invisible from where

they sat. A little way off, in a small circle of shade, a group of

women prisoners gathered silent, inert. A great stillness brooded over

the place, broken only by the buzzing of flies and the noises in the

street, which sounded dreamily as if it were many miles away. A man

was crying "Strawberries, fresh strawberries!" and his voice floated

in to the prison, bringing with it a tantalizing suggestion of

coolness and freedom and green fields.

Involuntarily Elizabeth made a gesture of weariness, and raised to her

parched lips the great bunch of roses, fresh from the country, which

Mrs. Bobby had brought. They already hung their heads.

"I suppose," the girl said dreamily, her eyes half shut, "our flowers

must be all out at the Homestead. It always looks so pretty there now,

before the heat has lasted too long. I can see it--the river with the

sails on it, and the fields covered with daisies--they must be out

now--ah, and the wild-roses!"--She drew a long breath. "Oh, I am sick

sometimes for a sight of it all," she broke out with sudden vehemence.

"I'd give anything to lie down in the grass with the trees over me,

and the cool wind in my face, and so--sleep"--Her voice sank away, she

made a weary gesture. "I'm so tired," she said, "I'd like to sleep

forever."

"My dear child." Mrs. Bobby caught her breath, a mist of tears in her

eyes. "Don't you ever sleep here?"--she asked tentatively after a

moment, and Elizabeth answered in the same dreary way, unconscious,

apparently, that she was departing from her usual reserve.

"No, I don't sleep often," she said, "especially since the nights have

been so hot. But when I do"--she paused and stared reflectively before

her, while the shadow in her eyes grew deeper. "There's a dream that

haunts me now," she said at last, "whenever I fall asleep. I dream

about my trial, and--it always goes against me. I stand there all

alone, the judge pronounces sentence, and I--I try to speak, I try to

tell them that I'm innocent, but--the words won't come--I wake up half

strangled"--she broke off shuddering. "Ah, you can't imagine how

horrible it is," she said, "worse even than--lying awake."

Mrs. Bobby was silent for a moment, but when she spoke her voice was

steady. "It's a horrible dream," she said, "but it's impossible--quite

impossible that it should come true. You won't be left alone, we shall

all stand by you, you will be acquitted surely--surely"--in spite of

herself, her voice suddenly faltered, in a way that belied her words.

"You think so?" Elizabeth said, quickly. "You _hope_ so. But--if you

should be mistaken?" She put out her hand and grasped Mrs. Bobby's

wrist. "Tell me the worst," she said. "I'd rather know it. Is there

much danger, do you--in your heart of hearts, do you think that I

shall be acquitted?" Involuntarily her grasp tightened, her strained,

dilated eyes searched her friend's face with a look that seemed to

compel only the truth--to tolerate no evasions. And Eleanor Van

Antwerp, with all her courage, could not meet it. She turned her face

away with a little sob.

Elizabeth sat rigid for a moment, waiting for the answer that did not

come; then her fingers relaxed their hold, she took her hand away and

sank back against the wall.

There was a long silence. The noon-day sun crept towards them,

dazzling the eyes, a few flies buzzed aimlessly about. Upon Eleanor

Van Antwerp's mind the prison court, as she saw it then, baking in the

noon-day heat--the group of women huddled together, the rags of some,

the tawdry finery of others, the look of dogged misery on their coarse

faces--the whole scene impressed itself, calling up always in after

years a sense of powerless despair.

At last Elizabeth turned to her, and a faint smile hovered about her

white lips.

"Do you know," she said, "did the warden show you? in that corner

there they have--the old scaffold--what's left of it, at least. They

keep it as an interesting relic. Oh, he wouldn't show it to me"--she

smiled again painfully--" he's too considerate--I heard him telling

one of the visitors. They don't have anything of the kind now, he

said,--there is--Sing Sing and the electric chair. And that is--or so

they say--more merciful. But is it--do you really think it can be?"

She paused and stared up at Mrs. Bobby with eyes full of a dawning

terror. "To have a hood put over one's face," she went on, her voice

trembling, "that's how they do it, isn't it?--to wait--wait for the

shock." ... She stopped, the look of terror in her eyes grew deeper.

She lifted the roses from her lap and held them up before her face, as

if to shut out, with their color and fragrance, some horrible vision.

"Oh, I see it day and night," she said, "day and night! If I see it

much longer, I shall go mad."

Mrs. Bobby's hand tightened convulsively upon hers.

"Elizabeth, my dear," she cried, "you mustn't think of such

possibilities. It could never--come to that, they would never--carry

their cruelty to that extent"--Her voice faltered.

Elizabeth put down her roses and looked up at her. Her face showed

recovered self-control. "Why--because I'm a woman?" she asked, with a

pale little smile. "That's what the warden said--that they wouldn't

condemn a woman to death. But even if they--stopped short of that,

would imprisonment--would this sort of thing, or worse"--she swept her

hand with a comprehensive gesture round her--"wouldn't death, on the

whole, be better?"

And Mrs. Bobby could not answer, for she thought in her heart it would

be--infinitely better.

But in a moment she rallied her energies.

"Elizabeth," she said, "there's no necessity to consider--either

alternative. I believe firmly that we shall get you off. But in order

to do it you must help us--to defend you. You seem indifferent about

it; Mr. Fenton complains that you keep things back. You can't afford

to trifle--tell us everything. Isn't there"--she leaned forward

eagerly and grasped Elizabeth's hand--"doesn't Julian Gerard know

something that would help us?"

She felt Elizabeth start and shiver; then stiffen into sudden

rigidity. The hand she held was withdrawn, and with the action the

girl seemed to release herself, mentally and physically, from her

grasp.

"I don't know," she said, and her voice was cold, almost as though she

resented being questioned, "I don't know why you think that."

"I don't think--I feel it! There is something that he can say." Mrs.

Bobby's eyes seemed to challenge a denial. Elizabeth met them with a

look of defiance.

"There is nothing," she said. "He knows nothing; or if he did"--she

lowered her voice with a sudden change of tone--"if he could save me,

I'd rather die than have him sent for."

"Ah--you'd rather die?" Mrs. Bobby caught her breath. "And you think

that is fair--to yourself, to your aunts, to us all?"

"I don't know." The girl's voice had the ring of weary obstinacy that

suffering will sometimes assume. "I only know I don't want him--sent

for."

Mrs. Bobby seemed to reflect. "We can't send for him," she said at

last, "we don't know where he is."

Elizabeth started. "You don't," she repeated, in a low voice, "know

where he is?"--

"No, he left no address. His mail is at his banker's--they don't know

where to forward it."

Elizabeth turned her face away. "Ah, I see," she murmured, "he doesn't

wish to be reminded of--anything at home." A pale cold smile flitted

across her white face. "It is better so," she said, firmly, "far, far

better. I am glad that he is away and that there is no use in sending

for him."

"But if there were"--all Mrs. Bobby's self-control could not keep the

tremor from her voice--"if there were, Elizabeth, isn't there

something that he could testify in your favor? Do tell me, dear," she

urged; the girl sat silent. "You see I have guessed it--it can do no

harm for me to know what it is."

Elizabeth spoke at last, low and hesitatingly. "He knows that on the

twenty-third of December, when--when that man said he saw me in

Brooklyn, I was with him--with Julian. I went out that morning,

meaning to do some shopping, but I met him accidentally. He persuaded

me to go up to the Metropolitan Museum--there was a picture he wanted

to show me. We were there some hours. And--and that is all."

"And that was," said Mrs. Bobby breathlessly, "on the twenty-third of

December. You are _sure_?"

"Quite sure," said the girl listlessly, "but what difference does it

make? I wouldn't tell Mr. Fenton--I said I couldn't remember what I

did that day, and I wouldn't tell you now, if I thought that you could

send for him. You can't send for him, can you?" She looked at Mrs.

Bobby with sudden alarm. "You really don't know where he is?"

"Upon my word and honor," Mrs. Bobby assured her, "I don't." And then

she said little more, but kissed Elizabeth presently, bade her keep up

her courage, and left sooner than she generally did.

"No, I don't know where he is," she said to herself, as the hansom

bore her swiftly up-town, and she stared out absently at the deserted

streets. "We don't know, but please God, we shall soon. If only that

man finds him, if he can only get him here in time."

_Chapter XXXIV_

This was in the early summer; and Elizabeth's trial was to be in

November. The time approached, and nothing had been heard of Julian

Gerard. Efforts were made to postpone the trial, that this important

witness might have time to appear. But the influence of people like

the Van Antwerps, which seems in some ways all-powerful, is in others

curiously slight. The District Attorney was acting in the interests of

the yellow journals and they, according to their own account, in the

interests of the people, which required, as they set forth in

high-sounding editorials, that no more favor should be shown to Miss

Van Vorst than to the lowest criminal.

After all, the girl's health had suffered so severely from the long

confinement that it seemed a cruelty to lengthen it, even with the

hope of Gerard's return. Mr. Fenton himself was of opinion that the

trial should not be postponed. He had done his best for his client,

though hampered more, perhaps, than he realized by his secret doubt of

everything she said. He did not believe in this alibi, which she had

trumped up, as he decided, when the one person who could confirm or

deny it was safely out of the way. Yet he tried to find some other

witness who remembered, or imagined having seen her at the Museum on

the morning when she was supposed to have been in Brooklyn. No such

person could be found. The case for the defence was lamentably weak.

Mr. Fenton admitted the fact to himself with a shrug of the shoulders,

and fell back philosophically on his conviction that no jury would

send a young woman of Elizabeth's position and attractions to the

electric chair.

Perhaps the person most to be pitied in those days was Miss Cornelia,

who had been summoned as witness for the prosecution to corroborate

the testimony of Bridget O'Flaherty, her former waitress, as to her

niece's words and manner on the morning after the murder. The poor

lady was in a pitiful state of agitation. "What shall I say?" she

asked, looking appealingly from one to the other of Elizabeth's

friends and advisers.

"Say anything," said Mrs. Bobby, hastily, "any--any lie that you can

invent."

She stopped. Miss Cornelia drew herself up with dignity. "I don't

think our child's cause can be helped by--by lies, Mrs. Van Antwerp,"

she said.

Mrs. Bobby felt herself rebuked. "Well, I am not given to lies myself,

as a rule," she explained, apologetically, "but in a case like this it

seems to me that the end justifies the means. It's a doctrine brought

into discredit, I know, by the Jesuits, but still it seems to have a

certain foundation in common-sense."

"I don't know anything about the Jesuits," said Miss Cornelia, with

some stiffness, "but I shall try to act as our Church would advise,

even--even if Elizabeth"--here her voice broke.

"I think," said Bobby Van Antwerp, coming to the rescue, "that Miss

Cornelia is right, Eleanor. It is much better to tell the exact truth,

and Fenton will make the best of it.--Good Heavens," he said

afterwards to his wife, "you don't suppose that the poor lady could

invent a plausible story, or even keep back anything that wouldn't be

brought out in cross-examination and make a worse effect than if she

gave it of her own accord!"

But upon Miss Cornelia the opposite side of the question was beginning

to make an impression. Her mind moved slowly. It was not easy for her

to break from old tradition. Her conscience had hitherto recognized

the broadly drawn line between right and wrong; no indefinite, subtle

gradations. As she had said once to Elizabeth, fully meaning it, one

could always do right if one tried. But if--if one could not tell what

the right was?...

Miss Joanna, sitting opposite to her in the twilight, broke the

silence hesitatingly. "I suppose, sister," she said, "I suppose you

remember--exactly what the poor child said--that morning? You

haven't"--Miss Joanna caught her breath--"you haven't forgotten?"

There was a note of entreaty in her voice.

Miss Cornelia could see it so plainly; the breakfast table and the

paper with those startling headlines, and the look on Elizabeth's

face, when she had made that extraordinary assertion. A confession of

guilt! That was the way in which it would be construed--there seemed

no way out of it. Miss Cornelia did not think that the most merciful

jury could acquit her after that. And yet the child was innocent--Miss

Cornelia knew that as surely as she knew that the Bible was inspired.

Was it reasonable, was it right that she should be required to give

evidence against her? Over Miss Cornelia's mind there swept a sudden,

sharp sense of injustice, a passionate rebellion against fate.

But a life-long habit of truth-telling is hard to overcome. She

answered Miss Joanna after a moment. "I--I haven't forgotten, sister,"

she said, and the hot tears scorched her eyeballs.

Miss Joanna put away her knitting with a hopeless sigh. "Well, of

course, sister, you must speak the truth," she said, drearily,

"but--it does seem hard." Then she went out of the room, crying

quietly.

Miss Cornelia sat motionless in the twilight, while that new tumult of

rebellion still raged within her. Ah, yes, it seemed more than

hard--it seemed cruel, unjust, that such a thing should be required of

her. Those strange people, the Jesuits, whom she had always held in

horror, had some reason on their side after all. There were cases to

which the simple, old-fashioned rules of right and wrong did not

apply, which were extraordinary, unprecedented.... Miss Cornelia could

not help asking herself--with a thrill of self-condemnation, indeed,

and yet another feeling which defended the question--whether in

certain circumstances, the wrong were not more to be commended, wiser,

better than the right.

She spent a sleepless night, thinking it over. The whole foundations

of her life, of her faith seemed shaken. She looked the next morning

so exhausted, when she went down as usual to The Tombs, that Elizabeth

at once divined that some new misfortune had happened, and it was not

long before she drew it out of her.

She sat for a long time very still, one hand clasping Miss Cornelia's,

the fingers of the other tapping on the ledge of the wall beside her.

"Of course, auntie," she said at last, quietly, "you must tell exactly

what happened. There's no good to be gained by lies; at least"--she

made an attempt at a smile--"my own success in that line hasn't been

very striking. I was a little out of my head that morning, and I don't

remember exactly what I said! but whatever it was"--she raised her

head proudly--"I don't want anything kept back. Let them know the

whole truth; then, if they condemn me, well and good. At least I

shan't have anything"--her voice faltered--"anything _more_ to

reproach myself with."

"Elizabeth!" The older woman gazed up at her admiringly. "You are so

brave--you are a lesson to me! But you--you don't realize, my

darling--" sobs choked her voice.

"Oh, yes--I realize." A pale smile flitted across the girl's face. "I

have realized--quite clearly--all these months. But that's no reason,

auntie, why you should save me by lies."

And then she turned the subject, and began to talk calmly enough,

about one of the women prisoners, in whose case she took a keen

interest. Nothing more was said about her own affairs. She had

relapsed, since that conversation months before with Mrs. Bobby, into

her old reserve, and spoke very little of herself. The cooler weather

was helping her. She seemed stronger, and always quite calm. Miss

Cornelia went away, feeling rebuked for her own cowardice. Elizabeth

was right, she thought with a pang of self-reproach; nothing but the

truth must be told in her defence. But meanwhile Miss Cornelia tried

to reconcile two opposite instincts; offering up day and night two

apparently irreconcilable petitions; that she might be enabled to

speak the truth exactly, and yet do no harm to her niece's cause.

_Chapter XXXV_

It was the first day of Elizabeth's trial. She could hardly realize

that it had come--this event which they had anticipated so long, the

thought of which had lately crowded out every other. There was nothing

alarming about the present proceedings--the appearance of one jury-man

after another, generally followed in each case by a peremptory

challenge. One was objected to because he was thought to have formed a

favorable opinion, another an unfavorable one, and still another

because he was apparently incapable of forming any opinion at all. If

she had not been on trial for her life, she might have thought it

dull.

Her gaze wandered to that wide court-room window opposite, from which

she could see an expanse of roofs, flag-staffs and chimneys, full of

charm and excitement after the unbroken outline of blank walls, which

for many months had bounded her view. Then, forgetting herself, she

glanced about the room, quickly turned and shrank back, while the

color rushed into her white face. There were some women whom she knew,

thickly veiled, in the crowd behind her--women who were against her.

Those who were her friends had the consideration to stay away. And

there were others whom she did not know, who crowded as close to the

bar as they could, eying her with eager curiosity, making remarks

about her in a stage whisper. As the heroine of this sensational case,

she was a disappointment both in dress and appearance.

"Well, her hair waves prettily"--the words came distinctly to

Elizabeth's ears in a lull in the proceeding--"but that's about all. I

don't see why she was ever called a beauty, do you?"

"Why, no, indeed. Her features aren't regular--not a bit. And isn't

she thin and white!"

"Hush!" a kindlier voice broke in, suppressing the others. "It's no

wonder, poor thing. Most people would lose their looks, if they'd been

through what she has."

A pang shot through Elizabeth none the less distinct because the

reason was, in view of what was going on, so trifling and absurd. She

had dressed herself that morning with unusual care, resolved to

present as far as possible an undisturbed front to the world; and she

had not realized that the plain black gown, and the unrelieved

sombreness of the black hat, which would once have thrown into more

dazzling relief her fresh young beauty, now emphasized with startling

plainness the change in her appearance. For a moment, the fact forced

itself upon her and hurt even then. When a woman has always been

regarded as a beauty, it is hard to become accustomed to a different

point of view. After all, what difference did it make? She had not

realized the effect which her looks were supposed to produce on the

jury.

For a while the prospect of any jury at all seemed dubious. The hours

passed, the day came to an end, and there were exactly two men in the

box. It was not till the end of the third day that the number was

complete--twelve most unhappy men, whose faces Eleanor Van Antwerp

scanned eagerly. Some, she decided, were kind; others--too logical;

all of them were more or less intelligent. There were one or two, she

thought, to whom the pathos of Elizabeth's pale and faded looks might

appeal with an eloquence that fresh coloring and rounded curves would

have lacked entirely. Upon these men she based her hopes.

And so the trial, once fairly started, dragged on its weary length.

Mrs. Bobby spent her days there, sitting beside Elizabeth; her whole

life, just then, seemed bounded by the court-house walls. She had no

interest in anything outside. And Elizabeth's aunts, too, came every

day. It was pathetic to see these timid, elderly women, plunged for

the first time in their sheltered lives into this fierce glare of

publicity, under which they bore up unflinchingly, in the effort to

show to all the world their firm faith in their niece's ultimate

acquittal.

As for Elizabeth, she had little hope; but neither had she, except at

times, any great fear. The worst had been that first day, and now she

was used to being stared at; used even to the thought that she was

being tried for her life. The scene and its accessories--the

listening, eager crowd behind her, the judge before her with his

impassive face, in which she thought she could perceive, now and

again--or did her hopes deceive her?--a gleam of sympathy; the jury

weary but resigned, the reporters taking notes, scanning her with eyes

that noted every detail of her manner and bearing, placed upon them

Heaven knows what construction! Bobby Van Antwerp moving restlessly

about, holding long conferences with the lawyers; her counsel and the

District Attorney wrangling, glaring at each other over the heads of

unfortunate witnesses--the whole thing lost its terrors, grew to be an

accepted part of her life's routine.

The evidence at first was technical. There was much she did not

understand--she wondered if the jury did. There were the doctors,

showing with many long words and tedious explanations, with what sort

of poison the murder had been committed; and then there were the

handwriting experts, with still longer words and more tedious

explanations. Now--what was it that they had brought out? Those

unfortunate letters which she remembered so well having written, in

great haste and anxiety. The experts were pointing out numerous points

of resemblance between them and another piece of paper, which she had

never seen before. And now it was the secret marriage they were

proving--though what was the use of that, when no one denied it? The

question of motive was absolutely clear; the District Attorney had

expatiated upon it at great length in his opening speech.

All this Elizabeth grasped more or less distinctly. She realized that

the evidence was strong against her. But she could not, weak and dazed

as she was, keep her mind on it. The voice of the witnesses would

grow indistinct, a mist would pass over the anxious faces around her,

a lull would come in the nervous tension of the atmosphere; the blue

sky, which she saw from the window, would seem very near, and she

would float off into phases of oblivion, from which she would be

roused, perhaps, by a touch on her arm, or a voice in her ear.

"Listen, darling, that was a point in your favor," her aunts or

Eleanor Van Antwerp would say.

These points were few and far between. But there was one which

Elizabeth understood--she hoped that the jury did.

Mr. Fenton was examining one of the medical experts for the

prosecution, a man who had had large experience in poisoning cases.

The counsel for the defence was putting him through series of

questions, the drift of which was not altogether plain. What sort of a

crime did he consider poisoning? An atrocious one, was it

not?--generally committed by hardened criminals? Had the witness ever

been in contact with a case of poisoning where the whole scheme had

been concocted and carried out by a girl of twenty, far removed by

education, friends and antecedents from any connection with crime? No,

the witness could not, in his own experience, recall any such case,

but he had no doubt that it had been known, though he agreed in

response to Mr. Fenton's next question, that it would be slightly

abnormal. And here the District Attorney interposed with one of those

objections which each lawyer seemed to make mechanically, whenever a

question proved inconvenient to his side; but the Judge decided in

favor of Mr. Fenton, and he went on imperturbably, shifting his ground

a little.

"Poisoning is a crime--don't you think so?--that calls for a great

deal of thought and calculation?"

"Yes," the witness thought it would undoubtedly.

"The person who planned it would have plenty of time to consider the

consequences?"