"I've met her," said O'Bannon.
"She made a very unfavorable impression on me," said Judge Homans. "I don't know when a young woman of agreeable appearance—she has considerable beauty—has made such an unfavorable impression." And His Honor added, as if the two remarks had nothing to do with each other, "I shall give this unfortunate maid a very light sentence."
The district attorney bowed. It was exactly what he had always intended.
But a sentence which sounded light to Judge Homans—not less than three and a half nor more than fifteen years—sounded heavy to Lydia. She was horrified. The recent visit which, under Mrs. Galton's auspices, she had paid to a man's prison was in her mind—the darkness, the crowded cells, the pale abnormal-looking prisoners, the smell, the guards, the silence. She simply would not allow Evans to spend fifteen years in such torture. She was all the more determined because she knew, without once admitting it, that she might have prevented it.
She read the sentence in the local newspaper at breakfast—she breakfasted in bed—and the next minute she was up and in Miss Bennett's room.
"This is a little too much," she said, walking in so fast that her silk dressing gown stood out like a rose-colored balloon. "Fifteen years! Those men must be mad! Come, Benny, put on your things. You must go with me to the district attorney's office and have this arranged. Imagine it! After her confessing too! I said she was wrong to confess."
But when she reached the office she found no one there but Miss Finnegan, the stenographer.
"Where's Mr. O'Bannon?" she asked as if she had an engagement with him which he had broken.
Miss Finnegan raised her head from her keys and looked at the unexpected visitor in a tomato-colored hat, whose feet had sounded so sharp and quick on the stairs and who had thrown open the door so violently.
"Mr. O'Bannon's in court," she answered in a tone which seemed to suggest that almost anyone would know that. By this time, mounting the stairs with more dignity, Miss Bennett entered, appealing and conciliatory.