“Where are you taking me?”
“Into another wing of the Tombs: don’t make a disturbance now, but come peaceably.”
“Not unless this old Jezebel goes with me,” cried the woman, furiously. “I tell you, she is ten thousand times worse than a thief; she wanted me to commit murder—to let one of the sweetest creatures that ever lived starve on her sick-bed; she tried to bribe me with that very ear-ring. I tell you, gentlemen, she is more of a murderer than I am a thief ten times over!”
She was interrupted by a laugh, low and quiet, but which shook Madame’s meagre form from head to foot.
“Pleasant charges, very,” she observed, addressing the magistrate; “perhaps I stole my own jewels.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” murmured the judge, scarcely above his breath, but Madame heard it.
“Yes,” she added, “and perhaps I engraved my own name on the back.”
She held out the ear-ring, and the judge saw G. De Marke engraved on the antique setting. He had heard the name, and now gazed with great curiosity on its owner, for with all her apparent poverty he knew her to be one of the wealthiest women in New York. He handed back the ear-ring with a bow, and waving his hand, ordered the prisoner to be removed.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A FRIEND IN NEED.
Alone in the streets of a great city, in the night-time—so young, so beautiful, without a home, a dollar, or a friend, what could the poor girl do?