What seemed to O'Bannon so incomprehensible was that Lydia shouldn't have known that the girl was in some sort of trouble. The sight of the room made him vividly aware of the intimacy of daily detail that any maid has in regard to her mistress—two women, and one going through hell.
He said to Miss Bennett after they had gone downstairs again: "Didn't Miss Thorne suspect that something was going wrong with the girl?"
Miss Bennett liked the district attorney so much that she felt a strong temptation, under the mask of discussing the case, to pour out to him all her troubles—the inevitable troubles of those whose lives were bound up with Lydia's. But her standards of good manners were too rigorous to allow her to yield.
"No, I'm afraid we didn't guess," she answered. "But now that we do know, is there anything we can do for the poor thing?"
"Not just now," he answered. "The case is clear against her. But when it comes to sentencing her you could do something. Anything Miss Thorne said in her favor would be taken into consideration by the judge."
"Tell me just what it is you want her to say," answered Miss Bennett, eager to help.
"It isn't what I want," O'Bannon replied with some irritation. "My duty is to present the case against her for the state. I'm telling what Miss Thorne can do if she feels that there are extenuating circumstances; if, for instance, she thinks that she herself has been careless about her valuables."
"She will, I'm sure," said Miss Bennett with more conviction than she felt, "because, between you and me, Mr. O'Bannon, she is careless. She lost a beautiful little bracelet the other—but when you're as young and lovely and rich as she is——"
She was interrupted by the district attorney's rather curt good-by.
"Do you want to drive back with me, sheriff?"