Lady Cheriton held her there with one hand while she stretched out her other hand to Lady Jane.
“Dear Lady Jane, how good of you to be with her—to comfort her.”
“Where else should I be?—I want to be near him!”
The gentle blue eyes filled with tears, the gracious head trembled a little. Then came a long shivering sigh and silence.
The mother knelt beside the sofa with her child’s head leaning forward upon her matronly bosom. There may have been some comfort perhaps in that contact, some recurrence of the thoughts and feelings of earlier years, when the mother could console every grief and soothe every pain. No words came to either of those mourners. What could be said in mitigation of a sorrow that seemed to offer no point of relief, no counter-balancing good. There was nothing to be done but to sit still and suffer.
The silence lasted long, and then Juanita lifted her head suddenly from its heavy repose and looked fixedly in her mother’s face.
“My father has come back with you?” she asked.
“Yes, dearest. We did not lose an hour. Had there been any quicker way of travelling we would have been here sooner.”
“My father will be able to find the murderer,” said Juanita, scarcely hearing her mother’s words, intent upon her own thought. “A great lawyer as he was; a judge, too; he must be able to trace the murderer—to bring him to justice—to take a life for a life. Oh, God!” with a shrill agonizing cry, “could a thousand lives give me back one hour of that one life? Yet it will be something—something—to know that his murderer has been killed—killed shamefully, in cold blood, in the broad light of day. Oh, God, thou Avenger of wrong, make his last hours bitter to him, make his last moments hopeless; let him see the gates of hell opening before him when he stands trembling with the rope round his neck.”
There was an intensity of hatred in this vindictive appeal, which thrilled the two listeners with an icy horror. It was like a blast from a frozen region blowing suddenly in their faces, and they shivered as they heard. Could it be the girl they knew, the loving, lovable girl, who, in those deep, harsh tones, called upon her God for vengeance and not for mercy?