“Very well, I’ll leave the amount in your hands. That will be the best course to adopt—won’t it?”
“I think so. There is a bye-law in most gaols against prisoners keeping their own money. Besides, you know you would soon spoil your fine clothes if you elected to clean your own cell, which I suppose you won’t think of doing?”
“Well, I don’t know about that.”
“Then in that case you had better wear the prison dress if you mean to do prison work. It is grey cloth, very comfortable and becoming.”
“May I wear it in addition to this dress?”
“Oh, dear me, no; you must wear our dress or your own.”
Laura Stanbridge hesitated. “I don’t want to be arrayed in the garb of a felon,” she ejaculated. “Not unless there is an absolute necessity for my doing so. I will, therefore, wear my own.”
She reasoned that in the gloomy dress which these poor criminals wore she would lose many of her fascinations. Besides, it was like putting on a badge of guilt—a thing that was most repugnant to her.
Having invited her to study the prison rules, the warders left her to herself. When alone, she gave full vent to her rage, and paced her narrow den with masculine strides, tearing her lip with her white wolfish teeth.
She bitterly regretted having made the false step which brought her into her present awkward predicament. It was a sort of mad infatuation which had led her to attempt the robbery at the draper’s. She could not any way account for the impulse which had so suddenly prompted her to commit such a foolish act.