And now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
His snowdrop was gazing straight at him from out great, wide eyes, her lips were parted as if she meant to speak, and her hand lay on the arm of her father, good Papa Legros, dressed all in black, and above whose sombre surcoat shone a kindly face almost distorted by its expression of anxiety and from which ran streams of perspiration which the poor man wiped off ever and anon with a bright-coloured handkerchief.
With a mechanical movement Michael passed his hand across his eyes. His brain returned from its long wandering in the realm of dreamland; the light ceased to flicker, the sea of grinning faces receded into the darkness. Michael now only saw Rose Marie. The devilish visions had been transformed into peaceful dreams of Heaven.
Though his mind—still feverish and numb—refused to believe that she was really there, yet his eyes took in every tiny detail of the golden picture which they saw.
There were the tiny curls that, ever rebellious, would break through the confines of the lace cap and flutter tantalisingly round her ear; there was the little mole just above the lip, which gave the perfect mouth, that otherwise had been accounted too serious, an exquisite air of piquancy; there was the delicate rise of the throat, peeping above the lace kerchief, a god-like snare wherein he had once dared to hope that his lips would be entrapped.
And all the while that Michael looked on his beloved, Daniel Pye was busy with his perjuries, and Master Oates stood up to corroborate these. Once or twice the Lord Chief Justice had turned to the accused, expecting a contradiction of such obvious lies. But the only word that ever escaped the latter's lips came mechanically as from one who had learned a lesson by heart.
"I am guilty—what these men say is true."
Once the Attorney-General had spoken quite irritably: