His attitude or possibly his expression must have betrayed something of his anxiety if not of his resolve, for her countenance fell as she watched him, and her voice sounded quite unnatural as she strove to ask to what she was indebted for this unexpected visit.
He did not keep her in suspense.
"Miss Dare," said he, not without kindness, for he was very sorry for this woman, despite the inevitable prejudice which her relations to the accused had awakened, "I would have given much not to have been obliged to disturb you to-night, but my duty would not allow it. There is a question which I have hitherto omitted to ask——"
He paused, shocked; she was swaying from side to side before his eyes, and seemed indeed about to fall. But at the outreaching of his hand she recovered herself and stood erect, the noblest spectacle of a woman triumphing over the weakness of her body by the mere force of her indomitable will, that he had ever beheld.
"Sit down," he gently urged, pushing toward her a chair. "You have had a hard and dreary week of it; you are in need of rest."
She did not refuse to avail herself of the chair, though, as he could not help but notice, she did not thereby relax one iota of the restraint she put upon herself.
"I do not understand," she murmured; "what question?"
"Miss Dare, in all you have told the court, in all that you have told me, about this fatal and unhappy affair, you have never informed us how it was you first came to hear of it. You were——"
"I heard it on the street corner," she interrupted, with what seemed to him an almost feverish haste.
"First?"