"It will."
She nodded.
"That is what Mr. Wiley thinks."
"And he also thinks, I suppose," said O'Bannon, "that no jury will convict her?"
"And what do you think?"
"I think," he answered, so slowly that each word fell clearly, "that a conviction can be had and that I shall get it."
Eleanor did not answer. The chauffeur was holding open the door of her car, and she walked forward and got into it. She had learned the thing she had come to learn—a knowledge that the stand he took was an honorable one. She was glad that his hands were clean, but in her left side her heart ached like a tooth. He seemed a stranger to her—unfriendly, remote, remote as a man struggling in a whirlpool would be remote from even the friendliest spectator on the bank.
A few days later the grand jury found a true bill against Lydia. That was no surprise even to her friends. Wiley and Albee had both prepared her for that. The crime for which she was indicted, however, came as a shock. It was manslaughter in the first degree. Albee was, or affected to be, pleased. It proved they were bluffing, he said.
"It may cost you a little more on Wiley's bill," he said. "It costs a little more, I suppose, to be acquitted of manslaughter than of criminal negligence; but on the other hand it may save you a thousand-dollar fine. A jury might conceivably find you guilty of a crime for which you could be fined, but not of one for which the only punishment is imprisonment."
Bobby thought the indictment showed conclusively that there was some crooked work going on, and wanted the district attorney's office investigated. Most of Lydia's friends began to feel that this was really carrying the thing too far.