The judge passed her so closely that his robe fluttered against her knee; then he disappeared through the door which led to his private chambers. Betty, fumbling for her glove, glanced down into her lap and then sat as if petrified with her eyes fairly starting from her head.
There upon her knee, half-hidden by her muff, lay a small thick envelope, its square, blank expanse staring up at her in uncompromising self-evidence! The judge himself! Mrs. Atterbury's organization must be indeed powerful when it could command the services of an administrator of justice!
Betty slipped the envelope into the capacious pocket of her cloak and rose as if in a trance. The shock of surprise had fairly taken her breath away and she strove vainly to collect herself as she lingered in obedience to her employer's instructions until only a few stragglers remained in the courtroom. Little knots of people had gathered in the corridor outside and she was threading her way through them when a convulsive clutch fell upon her arm, and looking up hastily, she found herself face to face with Miss Pope.
The little dressmaker's eyes were reddened and sunken and she seemed to have aged many years in the brief period that had elapsed since their last meeting.
"Miss Shaw!" The name fell from her lips in a quivering whisper. "You remember me, don't you? I made those dresses for you at Mrs. Atterbury's——"
"Yes." Betty took her hand in a little sympathetic squeeze. "I remember you, of course, Miss Pope. I recognized you in the courtroom and I am so sorry that a friend of yours is in trouble."
"He is my brother, and he is innocent!" The whisper changed to a low wail, and she clung to the girl's arm as if for support. "Oh, Miss, you don't know what it means to sit there day after day and listen to them hounding him to his death, knowing all the time that a word would save him! But there's nobody to say it, and they'll send him to the chair; him that never hurt a fly, he was so tender-hearted!"
"Your brother!" Betty murmured. "But the name—?"
"My half-brother, I should say. He's fifteen years younger than me, but he's all I have in the world and I love him like a mother and sister in one. Oh, Miss, if you only knew——!"
"We cannot talk here." Betty interrupted the little woman's grief-stricken outburst and drew her aside nervously. "I have not much time, I must return almost at once, but I should so like to comfort you. You look faint and ill; isn't there a lunchroom near where we can get some coffee?"