Elizabeth smiled. "Why should you, dear?" she said, quietly. "I've got to face the world alone some time, I suppose. And it will be nice to see what it's like—I've almost forgotten." She gave a little sigh, but checked it instantly, and went out before they could say any more.
Once in the street the world seemed so strange that it was startling, and for a moment turned her faint and giddy. It was a mild midwinter day—the trial had lasted over Christmas and into the new year—almost there seemed a foretaste of spring in the air. To Elizabeth the sunlight was dazzling; she put up her hand to ward it off. She walked slowly and feebly, as if she were convalescing from a long illness. She had not realized before how weak she was. Fortunately there was but a short walk before her, through the quiet regions of Irving Place, past Gramercy Park, and on to the hospital. She met no one she knew, but several strangers glanced at her curiously, or so she imagined, as if they recognized her, even through her veil. They might know her from the pictures with which the papers had been filled; they had seen one, no doubt, only that morning, with an account of the verdict. They were wondering still, perhaps, if she were guilty or innocent.
She was very tired when she reached the hospital, and the meeting with Amanda loomed up before her like a nightmare. Her hand trembled as she rang the bell. A woman in a sister's dress opened the door—the hospital was under the charge of a Protestant order. There was something conventual about the waiting-room, into which she was shown. There was little furniture, pictures of saints hung on the walls, the wide window was filled with stained glass, through which the light streamed faintly and fell in bars of crimson and purple upon the polished floor. The sister, speaking in the subdued voice which the place seemed to demand, bade Elizabeth seat herself and took up her name.
Elizabeth sank down with a sense of physical relief, which obliterated all other feelings. A moment later she looked up with a start. The door opened and a woman entered. It was Amanda's mother.
"Well Elizabeth, so you've got off!" she said, mechanically touching with dry lips her niece's cheek. "I'm sure I'm glad enough, for the sake of the family. And then I never thought you did it."
Elizabeth flushed painfully. "That was kind of you, Aunt Rebecca," she said.
"Well, a great many people did, you know, and probably do still, for that matter. But lor'—what difference does it make, as long as you've got off? Some people might think all the more of you. There was that girl at——who committed that murder that everybody talked about—she got a hundred offers, they say, right after she was acquitted. And everybody knew that she got off, just because she was a woman."
Elizabeth shuddered. "Please don't talk about it, Aunt Rebecca," she said, faintly. "Tell me about Amanda."
A sort of contraction crossed Aunt Rebecca's face, which might in any one else, have resulted in tears. "Oh, Amanda's pretty poorly," she said, in an odd, dry voice. "I guess all those sanitariums and new-fangled inventions, haven't done her much good. Why the doctor sent her here, I don't know. It's a queer Catholic place, and I don't hold with such notions, but Amanda seems taken with the sisters"—she broke off abruptly as one of their number entered.
She was a woman of middle age, with a grave, fine face and musical voice which harmonized with the place and her own costume. In her presence Amanda's mother, for all her uneasy contempt seemed to sink at once into insignificance. The Sister took possession very gently, but completely, of Elizabeth. Her charge had been very anxious, she said, to see her; it was kind of Miss Van Vorst to come. And then she led the way up the stairs, and down the long white corridors, talking quietly as she went of Amanda's case. The girl was suffering from a complication of maladies, and the Sister thought that there was, besides, some trouble weighing on her mind, under the stress of which she grew daily weaker. No, there was, humanly speaking, little hope, though Amanda's poor mother did not realize it, but the Sister thought it would do her patient good to see Miss Van Vorst, of whom she had talked a great deal. All this time there was not a word, not a curious glance, to show that the Sister knew that she had beside her the subject of so much discussion. And yet Elizabeth felt herself enveloped in an atmosphere of sympathy, a tacit recognition of the fact that she had suffered, which held in it not a trace of blame or suspicion. Elizabeth felt grateful.