“Oh, spare him!” cried Edith. “He is ill. He has just risen from his bed. Leave him here. He is not fit to go. Let me nurse him.”
The sheriff looked at her in increasing embarrassment, with a face full of pity.
“I am deeply grieved,” he said, in a low voice, “but I can not do otherwise. I must do my duty. You, Mrs. Dudleigh, must come also. I have a warrant for you too.”
“What!” groaned Dalton; “for her?”
The sheriff said nothing. The old man's face had such an expression of anguish that words were useless.
“Again!” murmured Dalton. “Again! and on that false charge! She will die! she will die!”
“Oh, papa!” exclaimed Edith. “Do not think of me. I can bear it. There is no danger for me. It is for you only that I am anxious.”
“My child! my darling Edith!” groaned the unhappy father, “this is my work—this is what I have wrought for you.”
Edith pressed her father to her heart. She raised her pale face, and, looking upward, sighed out in her agony of soul,
“O God! Is there any justice in heaven, when this is the justice of earth!”