Perhaps the person most to be pitied in those days was Miss Cornelia, who had been summoned as witness for the prosecution to corroborate the testimony of Bridget O'Flaherty, her former waitress, as to her niece's words and manner on the morning after the murder. The poor lady was in a pitiful state of agitation. "What shall I say?" she asked, looking appealingly from one to the other of Elizabeth's friends and advisers.
"Say anything," said Mrs. Bobby, hastily, "any—any lie that you can invent."
She stopped. Miss Cornelia drew herself up with dignity. "I don't think our child's cause can be helped by—by lies, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said.
Mrs. Bobby felt herself rebuked. "Well, I am not given to lies myself, as a rule," she explained, apologetically, "but in a case like this it seems to me that the end justifies the means. It's a doctrine brought into discredit, I know, by the Jesuits, but still it seems to have a certain foundation in common-sense."
"I don't know anything about the Jesuits," said Miss Cornelia, with some stiffness, "but I shall try to act as our Church would advise, even—even if Elizabeth"—here her voice broke.
"I think," said Bobby Van Antwerp, coming to the rescue, "that Miss Cornelia is right, Eleanor. It is much better to tell the exact truth, and Fenton will make the best of it.—Good Heavens," he said afterwards to his wife, "you don't suppose that the poor lady could invent a plausible story, or even keep back anything that wouldn't be brought out in cross-examination and make a worse effect than if she gave it of her own accord!"
But upon Miss Cornelia the opposite side of the question was beginning to make an impression. Her mind moved slowly. It was not easy for her to break from old tradition. Her conscience had hitherto recognized the broadly drawn line between right and wrong; no indefinite, subtle gradations. As she had said once to Elizabeth, fully meaning it, one could always do right if one tried. But if—if one could not tell what the right was?...
Miss Joanna, sitting opposite to her in the twilight, broke the silence hesitatingly. "I suppose, sister," she said, "I suppose you remember—exactly what the poor child said—that morning? You haven't"—Miss Joanna caught her breath—"you haven't forgotten?" There was a note of entreaty in her voice.
Miss Cornelia could see it so plainly; the breakfast table and the paper with those startling headlines, and the look on Elizabeth's face, when she had made that extraordinary assertion. A confession of guilt! That was the way in which it would be construed—there seemed no way out of it. Miss Cornelia did not think that the most merciful jury could acquit her after that. And yet the child was innocent—Miss Cornelia knew that as surely as she knew that the Bible was inspired. Was it reasonable, was it right that she should be required to give evidence against her? Over Miss Cornelia's mind there swept a sudden, sharp sense of injustice, a passionate rebellion against fate.
But a life-long habit of truth-telling is hard to overcome. She answered Miss Joanna after a moment. "I—I haven't forgotten, sister," she said, and the hot tears scorched her eyeballs.