Late in the afternoon she appeared before the judge's desk in his little room, lined with shelves of calf-bound volumes. It was a chilly November afternoon, and she had just come from tea at the golf club after eighteen holes. She was wrapped in a bright golden-brown coat, and a tomato-colored hat was pulled down over her brows.
The judge, for no reason ascertainable, had imagined Miss Thorne, the landed proprietor, the owner of jewels of value, as a dignified woman of thirty. He looked up in surprise over his spectacles. His first idea—he lived much out of the world—was that a mistake had been made and that an unruly female offender had been brought to him, not a complaining witness.
Even after this initial misunderstanding was explained the interview did not go well. The judge was a man of sixty, clean shaven and of a waxy hue. From his high, narrow brow all his lines flowed outward. His chin was heavy and deeply creased, and he had a way at times of drawing it in to meet his heavy, hunched shoulders. A natural interest in the continuity of his own thought, joined to fifteen years of pronouncements from the bench, rendered him impervious to interruption. He now insisted on reviewing the case of Evans, while Lydia sat tossing back first one side and then the other of her heavy coat and thinking—almost saying, "Oh, the tiresome old man! Why does he tell me all this? Doesn't he know that it was my jewels that were stolen?" She began to tap her foot, a sound which to those who knew Lydia well was regarded almost as the rattle of the rattlesnake. The judge began to draw his monologue to a close.
"The district attorney tells me that you feel that there was some carelessness on your own part which might be considered in a measure as constituting an extenuating circumstance——"
He got no further.
"The district attorney says so?" said Lydia, and if he had quoted the authority of the janitor's boy her tone could not have expressed more contemptuous surprise.
His Honor, however, missed it.
"Yes," he went on, "Mr. O'Bannon tells me that the charge of your safe, without supervision——"
"Mr. O'Bannon is completely misinformed," said Lydia, shutting her eyes and raising her eyebrows.
The judge turned his head squarely to look at her.