"So now, Judge," said she at last, "you can clear him, after all. It will be so fine for you to do that—so dramatic—so fitting, won't it?"
If Judge Henderson could have spoken, perhaps he would have done so; but she misunderstood his choking silence. She was miles away from the actual truth; and never was to know it in all her life.
"Don hadn't any father," said she. "His father's dead long ago, or Aurora would have told me. He's in his grave—and she'll not open it even for me, who have loved her so much. But if he had had a father..." Her voice ceased wistfully.
Judge Henderson coughed, his hands at his throat. She did not see his face.
"... If only he could have had a father like—this!"
Her own little hand fell gently—ever so gently—on the lithographed face of the great man, her hero, her champion—who always was to be such for her. It was the boldest act of all her quiet life. Her hand was very gentle, but as it fell, perhaps it dealt the heaviest blow to the vanity, the egotism, the innate selfishness of the man ever he had known, even in this swift series of blows he was now receiving. For once remorse, regret, understanding smote him sore. He saw how little he had earned what life had given him. He saw—himself!
"But then," she added hastily, and flushed to the roots of her hair—"I beg your pardon. That could not have been, of course. Don's father—the way he was born—why, Don's father couldn't have been a man like you! We all know that."
Miss Julia hobbled on away now to find her friend, Aurora Lane. She did not know the story of the night before. Miss Julia was very, very happy. She had her boy and his father after all—and both were above reproach! And she never told, not in all her life—and she never knew, not in all her life. And as she hobbled now up the walk beyond the little gate—somewhat repentant that her own eagerness had kept her away thus long from Aurora, she felt no remorse in her heart that she had not told Aurora Lane the real secret of her own life. "Because," remarked Miss Julia, to herself, like any woman, "there is one secret she has never told me—she has never told me who was Don's father!"
Poor little Miss Julia! Ah, very happy, very happy, little Miss Julia! Because she was a woman.