"I am very sorry for you, Mr. Mainwaring, believe me," she answered, earnestly, "and very grateful; but I cannot change my mind."
Then he had gone away, and for many long minutes Miss Hildreth sat as he had left her, her hands outstretched upon the table, her face quiet and expressionless, save for the close set curve of the mobile lips.
John Mainwaring, on leaving Miss Hildreth, walked quickly to his office, not in the most enviable frame of mind. As he entered the outer room, his clerk came forward and whispered a few words to him, then preceding him to the inner office, opened the door and held it back for Mainwaring to enter. As he did so, a dark figure rose up from the depths of a lounging chair, and advanced towards him. The brilliant sunshine from the outer room struck full athwart the stranger's face, and revealed the features of the Italian, Mattalini; then the door swung to, and the clerk returned to his desk in the full glare of the hot sunshine.
By ten o'clock the court-room was again filled to overflowing, apparently with the identical crowd of the day before. The battalion of fashionable ladies showed an increase of recruits, and the knot of lawyers gathered about the Bench was augmented in numbers. Close beside the railed off space, sat Mrs. Newbold and Dick Darling, while not far off, engaged in earnest conversation, were Mr. Tremain and Mainwaring.
Again there arose the concentrated murmur of many voices as Miss Hildreth took her place within the rails, and at the same moment Judge Anstice walked quietly to his seat on the Bench; and so began the second act in the tragic drama.
Mr. Munger intimated to his honour that his part in the proceedings had terminated with yesterday's evidence; which, he repeated, was in itself sufficient to incriminate a dozen suspects, and to prove a dozen primâ facie cases. Bearing this in mind, it was not necessary for him to recapitulate it in detail, or indeed to make any comments upon it. The point at issue was the identity of the lady arrested with the person named in the warrant as Adèle Lamien, or Lallovich. Yesterday's evidence—that of Miss Hildreth's intimate friends, and especially Mrs. Newbold's—had conclusively established that point; there could therefore be no hesitancy in proclaiming the warrant a valid one, and surrendering the lady up to the Russian Government. As to the guilt or innocence of Adèle Lamien, or Lallovich, in the affair of Count Stevan's murder, they were not called to pronounce upon; she must take her trial on that charge in the country where the crime was committed. The only point they were called upon to prove, was the legality of the warrant papers, and the identity of the person arrested; this point having been substantiated beyond question, he could not see any cause for further delay in the matter.
And then Mr. Munger sat down with an ugly triumphant frown on his rough-hewn face, and out flew a shower of his favourite paper pellets.
The silence that followed was intense. The hot summer sun beating in through the bare windows fell across a sea of expectant, excited faces, all turned in one direction, towards the slight, dark, upright figure seated within the railed off space. She, who, as the rich and beautiful Miss Hildreth, had been the object of their covetous envy, and who now, as Adèle Lamien, stood charged with so vile a complicity in crime as to separate her for ever from the poorest and lowest of that onlooking multitude, beside whose poverty and honesty her wealth and beauty fell away in torn and soiled fragments.
In the midst of this silence John Mainwaring arose to address the Bench.
Mr. Mainwaring's face was at all times non-committal, it wore now an absolutely sphinx-like imperturbability. Tossing back the heavy lock of black hair that fell over his forehead, and squaring his shoulders with a motion that bespoke both doggedness and obstinacy, Mr. Mainwaring's first words fell upon the listening audience with ringing distinctness, and with sudden, unexpected surprise.