Elizabeth stared at her thoughtfully for a moment beneath knit brows.
"I don't know that I care about their thanking me," she said at last, "and even if they're not worthy, that doesn't make it any the less hard for them, does it?"
To the matron this sentiment had a taint of immorality and she drew herself up primly. "Why, on that principle, Miss," she said, "there's no use at all in good behavior." Her point of view was the correct one, of course—at least for a prison official. But it was natural that Elizabeth, in revolt against the hard judgment of the world, should take the opposite side. And certainly the women, even the roughest of them, seemed to be grateful in their own way for her kindness, and respected absolutely the intangible barrier between them. There were one or two, indeed, younger and more imaginative than the rest, who would follow her with wistful eyes as she passed, or flush in involuntary, awkward delight if she spoke to them; to whom her presence in their midst appealed irresistibly, touching some latent sense of romance, and lending a new interest to the prison routine. There was something wraith-like, spiritual about her, as she grew from day to day, more frail, her face more thin and wasted, her eyes more unnaturally large and strained, and the shadows beneath them deeper and darker. Her gowns, since the hot weather began, were always white, unrelieved by color even at throat or belt. Only her hair made a gleam of brightness, the more vivid for the pallor of her face and the grayness of the prison walls.
It was this soft, wavy hair at which visitors to The Tombs looked most curiously, recognizing one of the strong pieces of evidence against her. There was a number of visitors to The Tombs, even on those hot summer days; people who only stared at one prisoner and asked before they left one question of the prison officials, which met the one answer. The warden—a gruff old man, hardened by long contact with the lowest offenders—seemed when his turn came to hesitate.
"Guilty, she?" he repeated, staring up at the questioner with his shrewd old eyes. "Well, there ain't a guilty person in The Tombs—not to hear them talk; but—she"—he paused a moment. "She never says nothing; but—bless you"—carried beyond himself by an unwonted burst of sentiment—"I'd as soon suspect an angel from heaven."
"Ah, he has had a large fee," the more cynical would observe as they left, and it was true. But the canny old warden was quite capable of accepting all the money in the world, and reserving the right to his own opinion, which he had stated in this case with absolute honesty. And it was shared, moreover, by the entire prison,—jailers and criminals alike.
Elizabeth grew conscious of the general sentiment and it cheered her more than its intrinsic value seemed to warrant. For it was based on no tangible evidence, was the result of a hundred unconsidered, unimportant words and actions, the effect of which, to those who had not seen or heard them, it was hard to explain; and it could penetrate little to the outside world. But she felt strangely indifferent to the outside world. Her horizon was bounded by the prison walls.
One day, sitting dull and languid on her bench in the shadow of the wall, she chanced to overhear a fragment of a conversation between the warden and a visitor. They stood within the door of the office, and their voices came to her distinctly. "I tell you," the warden said, apparently bringing his argument to a conclusion, "they'll never put a woman—let alone a young and pretty one like her—in the electric chair."
"Ah, but if she's guilty,"—the visitor's voice demanded. And then, with an odd grunt from the warden, they passed on. She could not hear the rest.
But what she had heard thrilled her with a new, sharp pang of terror, the reason of which she could not have explained. There was nothing in the warden's assertion, nothing even in the visitor's protest. She knew of course that there were people who believed her guilty, and the man's words were reassuring rather than otherwise. Yet something in them called up before her vividly for the first time the very danger which he disclaimed. Yes, she was to be tried for her life! Incredible stupidity!—how was it she had never realized it before?