The private room which Amanda occupied as one of the few "paying patients," was near the roof of the house, at the head of several flights of stairs. Sunlight poured in through the window, the floor was covered with matting, the walls bare and hung with religious pictures. Opposite the small iron bed, and placed where the light fell full upon it, was an engraving, the copy of a famous picture, of Christ upon the Cross. It was singularly vivid, and the sorrowful dignity of the face had attracted the eyes and soothed the sufferings of many an occupant of the room.
Amanda's strange, light eyes, as they stood out unnaturally large and dilated in her thin, wasted face, were not fixed upon the picture; but turned with eager expectancy towards the door. She was sitting up in bed, her head propped with pillows. Her skin had faded to a duller, more ghastly tint than ever, but a bright spot of red burned in either cheek. As Elizabeth entered she started, and an odd look flitted across her face—it was hard to tell whether it indicated relief, or fear, or perhaps a mingling of both.
"So you've come," she said, and drew a long sobbing breath. It was all her greeting. Elizabeth, embarrassed, murmured a few words of sympathy, as she sank into the chair nearest the door. The Sister, with a keen glance from one to the other, left the two girls alone.
Amanda immediately assumed control of the situation.
"Sit there," she said, in a quick, sharp voice, and pointing to a chair by the window, "sit there so I can look at you." Elizabeth mechanically obeyed and threw back her veil. Amanda's eyes fastened eagerly upon her face.
"Why, you—you've lost your looks," she announced, abruptly. "Did you know it?" There was a note of involuntary satisfaction in her voice.
Elizabeth tried to smile. "Worse things have happened to me than that, Amanda," she said.
"I didn't think anything could be worse—to you," Amanda said, feebly.
Elizabeth was silent. She was thinking that suffering had not yet produced in Amanda any regenerating effect.
"Well, after all, I guess it don't matter," Amanda said, drearily, after a pause. "You're acquitted just the same, and Mr. Gerard is just as crazy about you as ever, they say. I guess you've got the best of me still." She sank into a gloomy silence.