And then the tongues of the spectators were loosened. The charge of the judge had given great offence.
"It amounts to a positive instruction to the jury to acquit the prisoner!" fiercely whispered one malcontent.
"And when the testimony has so clearly convicted her!" added another.
"Nothing but partiality! He and her father were old cronies," put in a third.
"A partial judge ought to be impeached!" growled a fourth.
And so on the disapprobation rumbled through the court-room in thunder, not loud, but deep.
And then all became still as death.
Meanwhile the judge sat calmly on the bench, the only evidence of his strongly suppressed anxiety was the extreme paleness of his venerable face. What was passing in his mind during this time of awful stillness and waiting, in which the earth seemed arrested in her orbit, the sun stopped in his course? The dread question, should he, with more than Roman courage, be obliged to pass sentence of death on that child of his old friend, that young high-born, refined, and beautiful woman, whom from the depths of his soul he believed to be perfectly innocent?
Meanwhile Sybil Berners, her face bloodless, her frame almost pulseless, breathless as with suspended animation, leaned upon her husband's breast and waited for the verdict that was to give her life or death.
Both pale as herself, her husband and her friend sat, the first on her right side and the second on her left, as they sit by the dying, supporting her as best they might, her husband's arm around her waist, her friend's hand clasping hers.