As the waiter withdrew and closed the door, Sybil approached the judge, and lifted her veil.
"Sybil, my child! Mrs. Berners!" he said, suppressing with his habitual self-control, the exclamations of astonishment that arose to his lips.
He had been the life-long intimate friend of her father. He had known her from her birth, and in her childhood he had held her on his knee a hundred times. It was horrible to see her there before him, and to foresee what must follow. Who can blame him, if at that moment he wished her thousands of miles away from him, with the ocean rolling between them?
"I have come, your honor, to give myself up to justice, trusting that justice indeed may be meted out to me," said Sybil, as she sank trembling into the chair that he placed for her. He was scarcely less agitated than herself.
"I am guiltless of the crime with which I stand charged; and I can no longer bear the hiding and hunted life of a criminal! I now freely offer myself for trial, come what will of it! It is better to die a guiltless death than to live an outlawed life!" Sybil repeated, her flesh trembling, but her spirit firm.
Still the judge did not speak, but gazed on her with infinite compassion.
"It is a painful office, I know, Judge Ruthven," said Sybil, her eyes filling and her lip quivering, "a painful office, to consign your old friend's child to a prison, and a more trying duty may follow; but there is no help for it, you know."
"My poor child! my poor child!".
These words almost unconsciously escaped the lips of the judge, as he laid his hand upon her head.
"You are sorry for me," said Sybil.