"Oh, if she would but have let me speak!" she said to her husband, the tears dimming the brightness of her blue eyes.
Patricia caught the half whispered exclamation, and saw the glistening tear-drops; but she only folded her hands more closely together, and waited with a look of quiet endurance on her pale face.
Dick Darling was next interrogated, and her violent partisanship was decidedly refreshing to the excited listeners. She indignantly denied any possible connection between Miss Hildreth and Adèle Lallovich; but when pinned down to say why, she could only shake her brown head and declare she was sure of it from a moral point of view.
Yes, she had received the pink note from Mdlle. Lamien, on the evening of the 3rd of May. She could not say if the handwriting was that of Miss Hildreth, or if it was the same as that on the handkerchief. She was not familiar with Miss Hildreth's calligraphy. She had never had the smallest suspicion of Miss Hildreth's identity with Mdlle. Lamien; she didn't believe it. She was not given to looking for suspicious motives in every-day life; thank goodness she was not a sneak, and hoped she never might be; this last with a malevolent glance at Miss James. Miss Hildreth had told the story of Adèle Lallovich at her special request. Yes, she had used both names in telling it, Lamien and Lallovich.
Miss Darling finished with an open scowl at Mr. Munger, and a smile at Patricia, and fluttered off to Esther's side, where she kept up a running commentary on all subsequent events.
Once more there was a few moments' interval or breathing space, and then Mr. Munger played his trump card by requesting Philip Tremain to step forward. It had been, undoubtedly, a disagreeable surprise publicly when it transpired that Mr. Tremain was not to appear as Miss Hildreth's solicitor; but it created a still greater sensation that he should be called in evidence against her; and, for a few moments, as he stood there, composed, dignified, and impassive, such a silence fell upon the assemblage that even the dropping of the proverbial pin would have resounded loudly.
And in that brief interval Philip lost all sight or knowledge of those around him; he saw only the pale, proud face of the woman he loved, the close-shut curve of her lips, the anxious expectancy of her eyes. Was she fearful of him then, and of what he might say? he asked himself a little bitterly. She had never rightly estimated his love, why should he expect her to do so now?
Perhaps, since she had deceived him, she judged him by her standpoint of deception.
Then he lost touch with the more personal elements of the scene, and remembered only where he was, and why he stood there. That woman yonder, that dark, silent, motionless figure, with the clasped hands and the pallid beautiful face, was Patricia Hildreth—the woman of his life-long devotion, the love of his youth and his manhood—and she was charged with what? Murder!
And he? He could do nothing to exonerate her, nothing; he was helpless, powerless. She had refused even to give him an explanation of her position, and should Vladimir Mellikoff come off triumphant and she be taken from him, taken away to that Russia whose hand is as iron, whose vengeance is of blood, whose retribution stern as death, he should never know—never, never—how much of truth, how much of falsehood, she had kept back from him; or what was the secret that not all his passionate pleadings could wrest from her.