She sat bending forward a little, her hands folded, her face raised, on either cheek a streak of vivid crimson staining their wax-like pallor; her eyes beneath the dark, straight brows met his with one responsive flash of their old quick fire.
With the very slightest smile of encouragement upon his lips, John Mainwaring drew a deep breath and took up the thread of his discourse.
CHAPTER X.
A GLEAM OF LIGHT.
"And now, your honour," his deep voice rang out, "I come, perhaps, to the most inconsequent and incomprehensible part of any that Miss Hildreth has played in this curious and complicated history of a crime. I have shown you how she, actuated by an enthusiastic and Quixotic chivalry, imperilled her own life to help and succour a sister-woman, who, in a moment of mad passion, had committed such a crime as put her life in danger. Miss Hildreth, with a courage few men could emulate, had not only planned her flight, but accompanied her in it, and accomplished it with safety. It was a daring and hazardous undertaking; but Miss Hildreth considered neither the danger nor the hazard, so long as there was a chance of escape for that cruelly-wronged woman, who had struck down the villain who ruined her.
"The crime committed by Adèle Lamien was an offence against the laws of man, and being such, she stood a criminal and fugitive in the eyes of men. But what should be said of the false-hearted traitor who had committed a far graver moral crime, when he killed for ever the soul and heart of the woman he had called his wife? That was a question for a higher tribunal than any mere earthly one to answer, and before that eternal justice Stevan Lallovich had entered, with the guilt of moral murder fresh upon him.
"As he had already told his honour, Miss Hildreth parted from Adèle Lamien in Paris, and although she kept up her disguise and name until she reached America, it was only to gain time for the poor fugitive, and to give a false scent to the police. On reaching New York Miss Hildreth landed under her own proper name, and proceeded at once to her country place in the White Mountains, where she remained for several weeks without acquainting her friends with the fact of her return home. This desire on her part to remain quiet and unnoticed did not arise, as Mr. Munger would have them believe, from any criminal wish to keep her whereabouts unknown, but was the outcome of purely personal motives—motives he was not at liberty to divulge; but this much he would say, these motives had nothing whatever to do with Adèle Lamien's movements; Miss Hildreth had indeed heard nothing from, or of, that lady since their parting.
"During this month or six weeks of solitude Miss Hildreth was engaged upon a very delicate and purely personal matter, the successful result of which she had very deeply at heart, and in the carrying out of which she was willing to adopt any measures, no matter how compromising.
"Upon the nature of this work his lips were sealed, but he was willing to stake his honour as to the probity and lawfulness of Miss Hildreth's intentions. In the furtherance of this object circumstances arose which, in Miss Hildreth's opinion, made it necessary for her to adopt another character than her own; to enter, in fact, upon a little play-acting, in which she personated the sole character. What more natural than that she should make use of the name and disguise of the lady she had so lately protected? As Adèle Lamien—a foreigner and dependent, with the suspicion of a tragic past to give effect to the present—she could enter without fear of detection upon the delicate mission she had marked out for herself.