This decision, from one she had trusted so implicitly, seemed to crush her.
"Ah," she murmured, "if you did not believe him guilty you would not leave him thus to his fate."
He gave her a short, side-long glance, half-mocking, half-pitiful.
"If," she pursued, "you had felt even a passing gleam of doubt, such as came to me when I discovered that he had never really admitted his guilt, you would let no mere mistake on the part of a woman turn you from your duty as counsellor for a man on trial for his life."
His glance lost its pity and became wholly mocking.
"And do you cherish but passing gleams?" he sarcastically asked.
She started back.
"I laugh at the inconsistency of women," he cried. "You have sacrificed every thing, even risked your life for a man you really believe guilty of crime; yet if another man similarly stained asked you for your compassion only, you would fly from him as from a pestilence."
But no words he could utter of this sort were able to raise any emotion in her now.
"Mr. Orcutt," she demanded, "do you believe Craik Mansell innocent?"