“I mean, though the detectives we have hitherto employed have failed to discover the least clue to this hideous mystery, yet if there were more time, we might engage others who might be more successful.”
“More time! Oh, God! When is the day of her—martyrdom ordered?”
“This day, fortnight, I understand.”
Malcolm recoiled and sank into his seat. There was silence between them for a few minutes, and then Malcolm suddenly exclaimed:
“Fenton, I know it is a desperate chance, but I cannot bear to have her perish without another effort. Draw up a petition for a respite, and after I have seen her to-morrow, I will myself take it up to town, and lay it before the Home Secretary.”
“I will do so, and get as many signatures as I can in the meanwhile,” replied the lawyer, feeling a sense of relief at the thought of doing anything, however hopelessly, for his unhappy client; and knowing besides, that if it did Eudora no good, it might help to console Malcolm with the thought that nothing had been left untried to save her.
They talked over the terms of the petition, and then Malcolm, leaving the lawyer to draw up the document, took his departure.
Loathing the thought of rest while Eudora lay in the condemned cell, he bent his steps towards the prison, and spent the night in walking up and down before the walls that confined the unhappy girl.
Meanwhile Eudora lay extended on the iron bed of the condemned cell. She was still in a deep swoon; her form was rigid, her features livid, her pulse still.
The two watchers, while conscientiously doing all they could to restore her sensibilities, silently hoped that she might never more awake to suffering, but that her soul might pass in that insensibility. During that long, deep trance, her spirit must have wandered far back over leagues of space, and years of time to the beautiful land of her birth, and the days of her childhood, for when at dawn of morning she recovered her senses, she looked around her with eyes full of the innocent, soft light of girlhood, modified only by a slight surprise.