It was Aurora Lane!
CHAPTER XIII
"AS YOU BELIEVE IN GOD!"
Aurora Lane and Judge Henderson both started back as they faced one another. For the moment neither spoke.
Aurora was pale, quite beyond her wont, haggard-looking about the eyes. She had come direct from her home, without alteration of her usual daily costume. In spite of all, she was very far from uncomely as she stood now, about her the old indefinable stamp of class which always had clung to her. Certainly she was quite the equal in appearance of this tall man, soft from easy living, who faced her now, a trifle pasty of skin, a trifle soft about the jaws, a trifle indefinite about the waist—a man with a face as pale and haggard as her own.
Tense as she was, her long schooling in repression stood her in such stead as to leave her in the better possession of self-control.
"My dear—my dear Madam——" began Judge Henderson.
The hearer in the room beyond must have caught the pause in his voice, its agitation—and must have heard the even tones of the woman as she spoke at last, after a long silence.
"I have come to your office, as you know, for the first time," said Aurora Lane. She gave him no title, no formal address. "It is the first time in twenty years."