"Her statement impresses me differently. She is either entirely innocent, or she had an accomplice, whose voice she recognized; and this clue should be investigated."
The District Solicitor rose and bowed to the Magistrate.
"With your Honor's permission, I should like to ask the prisoner whom she expected to see, when she recognized the voice?"
"A person who is very dear to me, but who is not in the United States."
"What is the name of that person?"
Her lips moved to pronounce his name, but some swift intuitive warning restrained the utterance. Suddenly a new horror, a ghastly possibility, thrust itself for the first time before her, and she felt as though some hand of ice clutched her heart.
Those who watched her so closely, saw the blood ebb from cheeks and lips; noted the ashy pallor that succeeded, and the strange groping motion of her hands. She staggered toward the platform, and when the Magistrate caught her arm, she fell against him like some tottering marble image, entirely unconscious.
So prolonged and death-like was the swoon, and so futile the usual methods of restoration, that the prisoner was carried into the small ante-room, and laid upon a wooden bench; where a physician, who chanced to be in the audience, was summoned to attend her. Finding restoratives ineffectual, he took out his lancet:
"This is no ordinary fainting fit."