“You will not condemn a woman unheard,” she wrote, with a touch of melodrama. “I expect you here on Sunday evening at nine. You cannot be so hard as not to come.”
George had written that he would come, but that his determination was unchangeable. “I must come, as you ask me,” he said; “but it is useless—worse than useless.” Still he would come.
Bill Sykes likes to be tried in a black coat, and draggle-tailed Sal smooths her tangled locks before she enters the dock. Who can doubt, though it be not recorded, that the burghers of Calais, cruelly restricted to their shirts, donned their finest linen to face King Edward and his Queen, or that the Inquisitors were privileged to behold many a robe born to triumph on a different stage? And so Neaera Witt adorned herself to meet George Neston with subtle simplicity. Her own ill-chastened taste, fed upon popular engravings, hankered after black velvet, plainly made in clinging folds; but she fancied that the motive would be too obvious for an eye so rusé as George’s, and reluctantly surrendered her picture of a second Queen of Scots. White would be better; white could cling as well as black, and would so mingle suggestions of remorse and innocence that surely he could not be hard-hearted enough to draw the distinction. A knot of flowers, destined to be plucked to pieces by agitated hands—so much conventional emotion she could not deny herself,—a dress cut low, and open sleeves made to fall back when the white arms were upstretched for pity,—all this should make a combined assault on George’s higher nature and on his lower. Neaera thought that, if only she had been granted time and money to dress properly, she might never have seen the inside of Peckton gaol at all; for even lawyers are human, or, if that be disputed, let us say not superhuman.
George came in with all the awkwardness of an Englishman who hates a scene and feels himself a fool for his awkwardness. Neaera motioned him to a chair, and they sat silent for a moment.
“You sent for me, Mrs. Witt?”
“Yes,” said Neaera, looking at the fire. Then, with a sudden turn of her eyes upon him, she added, “It was only—to thank you.”
“I’m afraid you have little enough to thank me for.”
“Yes; your kindness at Liverpool.”
“Oh, it seemed the best way out. I hope you pardon the liberty I took?”
“And for an earlier kindness of yours.”