“They had exchanged tokens. He had parted with this knife to your husband. It is the damning link, to which I’ll swear. The Court is my Court, and my testimony will be final. I hang your Louis, Madame—twist a saintly neck to save a rake’s. Well, let it be. Women have these penchants.”
His vile innuendoes passed her by. White, withered in the scorching blast, the exaltation of her purpose kept her still erect, and steadfast to the end on which she’d staked her soul. Herself, in that foredoom, counted no longer for anything. She would save her love, her saint, though all the dogs of hell combined to pull him down.
Dusk was trooping up from the valleys. The sun-lit distant peaks budded from it like flower-spires in a fading paradise. As point by point they misted into vapour, so eternal darkness seemed to claim her to itself. In a little she would be quite alone. A child’s laugh, coming up faintly from the road below, smote on her heart like a death-cry. She started involuntarily; then stood stone-still. It was fearful to see tears running down a stone face. But each syllable of her voice, when she spoke, was as if carved and rounded.
“A worthless life; but innocent of this. He will not speak, you think—reveal the truth?”
“Not unless you bid him.”
“Ah!”
Even her loathing of that emphasis—of all that it implied—could wring no more from her. He conned her pitilessly.
“But say that he did—a palpable subterfuge to escape the halter. I’ll swear I saw the knife on him that very day.”
She hardly seemed to hear him.
“Worthless,” she continued lifelessly; “but I would not have him suffer—not for—you say he may be saved, once sentenced—given the means to escape?”