"Miss Vaughan, you committed a great error—an error perhaps in some degree excusable from your youth. But you have atoned for it more nobly than error was ever atoned for before. At the risk of losing all most dear to you, and of exposing yourself to the comments of the world, you have come forward to save Mr. Lennox. I, for one, must express my admiration of your conduct. Your evidence has acquitted the prisoner—the jury have intimated that there is no need to proceed with the case."
Then arose cheers that could not be silenced. In vain the judge held up his hand in warning and the usher cried "Silence!"
"Heaven bless her," cried the women, with weeping eyes.
"She is a heroine!" the men said, with flushed faces.
There was a general commotion; and when it had subsided she had disappeared. Those who had watched her to the last said that when the judge, in his stately manner, praised her, her face flushed and her lips quivered; then it grew deathly pale again, and she glided away.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
The famous trial was over; the "sensation" was at an end. The accused Claude Lennox stood once more free among his fellow-men. Loud cheers greeted him, loud acclamations followed him. He was the popular idol. His friends surrounded him. "Bravo, Claude, old friend! I thought it would come right. We knew you were innocent. But what a terrible thing circumstantial evidence is!" Claude stood in the midst of a large circle of well-wishers. Colonel Lennox, whose anger had all vanished when he found his nephew in real danger, stood by his side. He seemed to have grown older and grayer.
"It was a narrow escape for you, Claude," he said, and his voice trembled and his limbs shook.
"My thanks are due to Heaven," said the young man, reverently. "Humanly speaking, I owe my life to that brave girl who has risked everything to save me. Oh, uncle, where is she? We are talking idly here when I owe my life to her; and I know all she has suffered and lost to save me."