The next morning, a box of flowers was brought to her; the white roses which he had always sent her. For a moment she hesitated, touched them lovingly, and then at last she took one of them and fastened it in her belt. "It may bring luck," she murmured, as if to excuse her action, and then she bent her head, and pressed her lips to its fragrant petals.
A little later, when she entered the court-room, the eyes of all were fixed on the flower. It was the first touch of color that had ever relieved her black gown.
"You see," one woman whispered, "it's the sign of innocence."
Her companion, less easily moved, replied cautiously: "Perhaps."
Chapter XXXVIII
The tide of popular sentiment was turning in Elizabeth's favor. It had not been with her at first, in spite of her youth and the pathetic circumstances of her position; nay, against her all the more on that very account with many people, who feared a display of mawkish sentiment, and to whom the cold-blooded character of the crime stood out the more harshly, by contrast with her soft and girlish looks. But now one thing and another—an intangible something in her manner on the witness-stand; Gerard's return and his evidence on her behalf; his apparently unchanged devotion—all this had created a strong revulsion of feeling, which was increased rather than diminished by the District Attorney's charge.
The District Attorney was in a brutal mood. He did not spare Elizabeth, he left it, he said, to the jury to determine the weight of Gerard's evidence. For himself, he would not for the world suggest that a gentleman of Mr. Gerard's high character would testify falsely; yet he might be—mistaken; he might easily make some slight error in dates, misled by his—his interest in the defendant. While he talked Gerard bit his lip, inwardly cursing that dictate of civilization which had abolished duelling, and made even horsewhipping a doubtful expedient. Mrs. Bobby was considering ways by which one could be avenged on "a horrible man, not in society, whom one couldn't snub by not asking him to dinner, or anything of that kind." Elizabeth felt, with a new thrill of pain, that she was involving Gerard in her own disgrace. But Mr. Fenton surveyed the District Attorney unmoved through half-closed eyes, and said to himself coolly that he was going too far.