“Now,” Romer said, after having waited in vain for her to speak, “now, if you will be so good, I should like to have you come with me into the court room, in order, you know, to do what I have said.”
At this, Ruth winced perceptibly. “Oh,” she said, very low, “must—must I go into court again?”
“Oh, this time,” explained Romer, “it will not be as hard for you as it was before. There’ll be, no spectators and no red tape. You’ll tell the judge that you withdraw your plea of guilty, and plead not guilty, and he’ll say all right; and then you’ll see me nolle the indictment; and then it will all be over for good; and, as I’ve said, you’ll go home with Mr. Hetzel.”
Ruth rose, bowed to Romer, and said, “I am ready to follow you.”
“Is there any objection to my accompanying you?” Hetzel asked.
“Oh, no; come along,” said Romer.
Every thing befell substantially as Romer had predicted. They found the judge presiding over an empty court-room. His honor came down informally from the bench, bade Mrs. Ripley be seated, said laughingly, “I’ll act as clerk and judge both,” went to the clerk’s desk, possessed himself of pen, ink, and paper, rattled off sotto voce, “You, Judith Peixada, do hereby”—mumble, mumble, mumble—“and enter in lieu of the same”—mumble, mumble—“upon the indictment;” threw down his pen, got up, added in a loud, hearty voice, “That’s all, madam: good day,” bowed, and left the room.
A few minutes later Ruth was seated at Hetzel’s side in a carriage; and the carriage was making at top-speed for Beekman Place. After they had driven for half a dozen blocks in silence, Hetzel began, “Mrs. Ripley, I am sorry to disturb you. I suppose you are so tired that you would rather not be talked to. But there is something which you must hear before we reach home; and I must beg of you to give me permission to say it now—at once.”
“Say any thing you wish. I will listen to any thing you wish to say.” Her voice was that of a woman whose spirit has been quite broken and subdued.
“Well, then, the upshot of what I have to say is just this. Don’t for a moment imagine that I mean to reproach you. Under the circumstances—considering the shock and the pain of your situation last Monday—you weren’t to be blamed for jumping to a false conclusion. But now, at last, you are in a position to see things as they truly are. What I want to say is what Mrs. Hart wanted to say when she visited you on Tuesday. It is that Arthur—that your husband—had no more idea, when he put that advertisement into the papers, that you were Judith Peixada, than I had, or than the most indifferent person in the world had. When you fancy that he had been trying to find out your secrets behind your back, you do him a—a tremendous injustice. He never would be capable of such a thing. Arthur is the frankest, honestest fellow that ever lived. He doesn’t know what deception means. The amount of the matter was simply this. He had been retained by Mr. Peixada to hunt up his brother’s widow. In order to accomplish this, he resorted to a device which, I suppose, precedents seemed to justify, though it strikes me as a pretty shabby one, notwithstanding—he advertised. And when he went to meet Mrs. Peixada in his client’s office, and found that she and you were one and the same person, why, he was as much astonished as—as I was when he came home and told me about it. There’s the long and short of the story in a nutshell. The detail of it you’ll learn when you talk it over with him.”