"It's not much, certainly," Mrs. Bobby's anxiety admitted. "And yet a good deal, too," her aristocratic instincts involuntarily responded; "and will have their weight with the jury," her cynicism added. But then again despair overwhelmed her, and she put the unavailing question: "Bobby, is there—do you think there is any hope?"
Bobby stared back at her, his face hardly less white than hers.
"God only knows, Eleanor! If she were just a man, or even an ordinary woman, I should say 'no;' but for a young girl, there's always a chance. Let her"—he dropped his hand on the table beside him with a deep sigh—"let her look as pretty as she can. It seems to me about the only hope."
"She won't look pretty," his wife returned, with a little sob. "She is just the shadow of her old self; if she stays in that place much longer, I believe it will kill her. Bobby," she cried, with a sudden burst of indignation, staring up at him with tragic eyes, "if that child dies—there, it will be murder! And yet you say the law is just!"
Bobby had said so much in the last few weeks in perfunctory defence of the law that he was weary of the subject, and so he attempted no further protestations, but watched his wife sadly as she walked impatiently to and fro; a slight, childlike creature, her cheeks flushed, her eyes brilliant with impotent anger, dashing herself as it were against impenetrable barriers. Only once before in her life had Eleanor Van Antwerp been confronted with an obstacle that did not yield to her wishes. That was when the baby died, and she had resigned herself to what she believed to be Divine Providence. But this seemed mere human stupidity.
"If only men were not so logical!" she exclaimed, despairingly. "Women, if they intended to get her off, would do it, no matter what the evidence was; but men!—they are so bound hand and foot by their sense of justice, their respect for law, and Heaven knows what! that they are quite capable, even if they believe her innocent, of finding her guilty, just because the evidence was against her."
"Well that's what they're supposed to do," Bobby put in, deprecatingly, "they've got to abide by the evidence." It was the twentieth time that he had made this explanation, and for the twentieth time, she brushed it aside.
"What does it matter," she demanded, "about the evidence, when any one with common-sense must know the girl is innocent? But I see how it is, Bobby," she went on, her lip quivering. "You don't really believe in her the way that I do. You have doubts—at the bottom of your heart you have doubts. Tell me the truth, and I'll try to forgive you—haven't you?"
She stopped before him, her dark eyes, fastened upon his, seemed to read his soul, but he answered steadily: "Eleanor, upon my honor, I believe in that child's innocence as you do. I'd give anything in the world to get her off. (Yes, and I would," he added to himself "for your sake, if she had committed twenty murders.")
She drew a long sigh of relief. "Oh, Bobby, you are nice," she said, gratefully. "You've been very good to me all this time—never once saying 'I told you so,' when the whole thing has been all my fault for not taking your advice."