“The thing for you to do is to keep yourself as fit as possible during the days that are now going to elapse before the trial. Remember that everything may depend on your making a good and, as I believe, an honest impression on the jury.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Jean walked the whole way back to Coburg Square. She was numb, spent with misery. For the first time hope, that illusive yet infinitely comforting and uplifting companion, had left her side, and she felt to-night as if he had never been there. The knowledge that she had failed to secure anything that really mattered by what now seemed to her an absurd and inglorious adventure added to the load of misery and discouragement she was now carrying.
She made up her mind to go back to Terriford early to-morrow morning, as the need for make-believe was past.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when she reached the deserted square. Quietly she turned the old-fashioned latchkey in the big box lock. The hall was in darkness, but under the ailing lodger’s door ran a thin streak of light. Did the poor man never go to sleep?
She felt her way down the kitchen stairs, and turning into the kitchen, lit the gas.
She felt extraordinarily wide awake, and yet tired, tired to death! The thought of going up to the cold bedroom where she had spent such excited hours of hope, suspense, and, to-day, of triumphant satisfaction, filled her with a feeling of sick depression. Suddenly she told herself that she would stay down here, in this warm, comfortable kitchen all night. Mrs. Lightfoot would never find it out, and if she did—what matter?
She made up the fire quietly. With luck there would still be a remnant of warmth when she awoke to-morrow morning at half-past six. She knelt down, but she found she could not say the simple, trusting prayers she had said from childhood, for she felt that God had forsaken her.
She got up, and by the light of the fire she pushed forward the black horsehair-covered armchair in which Mrs. Lightfoot generally sat of an evening. Then she put her own chair in front of it, and lay down.
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