“It would seem that one latter-day goddess must have been already weighed—and with justice—to have made such gooseberry jam out of your heart of flint. A face that can make you forget to be a lawyer first! I’d like to see——”
Before “the friend” whom Holt wished her to meet could retract or modify, Dolores was led into the larger room. She found that “that very next person” to whose eyes she would lift her own was the judge of the case of Cabot vs. Cabot. And while she did not remember—not exactly—the compliment paid her in the cab, she met his shrewd gaze with her own defense. He looked for the truth. He saw it—that she felt no shame.
What they said did not matter—probably could not have been recalled by any of the three. Their brief chat was significant only through the things they might not say.
In Justice Strang Dolores saw a man who filled her with confidence. The determination to know the worst about himself and conquer it showed in the set of his jaw. His red necktie had action—even daring. His attire otherwise, like his manner, was conventional.
He escorted them into the hall and to the elevator. Just before the door clicked shut upon them he said so emphatically that the elevator-man turned and stared curiously at her:
“Young lady, you have the most eloquent personality I have ever met.”
And so it came about that the decision denying Catherine Cabot her divorce came to the press as a thunder-clap two days later. The comment that resulted Justice Strang met with interviews in which he put unanswerable questions. Who suffered most, the innocent or the guilty? To make the innocent suffer—was not that a culpable act? What had been proved? The wife’s evidence was unavailable. The maid had disappeared. The detectives could testify to nothing that was proof of guilt. Why elect a judicial puppet? Of what use was a judge not entitled to disregard everything except his own honest opinion?
Thus it transpired that Dolores Trent, having been convicted unjustly in the public mind of the several past offenses ascribed to her, found herself vindicated of the one crime against Society of which she really was guilty as charged.
Each morning a magnificent box from an Avenue florist was delivered to the interesting occupant of a small, furnished suite in an up-town apartment hotel. The regularity of the “attention” quipped the management’s curiosity concerning “Miss Trevor.” Usually such regardlessness was followed by a gentleman in a hired car, wearing a fur-lined overcoat and a manner at once suave and impatient. But no gentleman had shown interest in this lady since the apartment had been engaged and paid for by one whose coat was most unpretentious and whose manner was neither suave nor impatient—a pleasant-spoken, bald-pated, breezy type of a man who somehow did not seem the sort to be telling it daily “in flowers.”