The moment O'Hara saw her well, his visage acquired a ghastly ribbed fixity. Even before this, she, by one flashed glance, had known him.
But she took the envelope with easy coolness. And, instead of then returning upon her steps, went still beyond, and whispered to two men in the hall: “Do not let that man pass out!”
As she again returned inward past O'Hara, she remarked: “You might wait here a little”.
She travelled then, not hurrying, down the breadth of a great apartment to a side room where her father sat, capped and writing; and she said: “Papa, the man who assaulted me in the train is now in the hall. As his sentence was three years, he must have escaped—” She was gone at once, the unaddressed envelope, still unopened, shivering a little in her hand.
Frankl leapt up, rather pale, thinking that if the man had come here, he must mean mischief; but remembering that the man was a gentleman, a priest, he took heart, and went out.
O'Hara, meantime, stood at bay, guessing his exit blocked, while the terrors of death gat hold upon him, the flesh of his yellow jaw shivering. But he was a man of stern mind—stern as the rocky aspect of his face, and the moment he saw Frankl coming (he had seen him in the Court), he started to meet him—stooped to the Jew's ear, who shrank delicately from contact.
“There isn't any good in running me down, sir”, he whispered in sycophant haste. “I pledge you my word I came here without knowing to whom. O do, now! I have already suffered for my crime; and if you attempt to capture me, I do assure you, I strangle you where you stand! Do, now! I only brought a letter—”
Frankl, half inclined to tyrannize over misery, and half afraid, swept his hand down the beard.
“Letter?” said he: “from whom?”
“From a friend”.