“Go on, Diane. I must know it all.”
She stopped and lifted her white face toward his, twisting her handkerchief with frantic hands.
“Papa, I can’t—I can’t tell you all; but Overton and Arthur were alone together. Overton broke his ankle; he couldn’t walk. Arthur took the sledge and the dogs and escaped, leaving Overton in the blizzard, helpless, to freeze to death!”
The judge made no response. He stood looking down at his daughter without the power to reply. She seemed to think he had not understood, and she repeated her story with a kind of agony which showed him that she felt a vicarious participation in her husband’s act.
“He left him—helpless—to die. Overton wasn’t even entirely unconscious; he—he lay there and saw Arthur go!”
The judge could not believe it. Whatever his fears had been, the fact was past belief.
“You must be mistaken; you can’t have understood it all. He must have left him to go for help, and then returned.”
She shook her head.
“I asked him—he never went back until it was too late.”
“Faunce admits this? He told you this himself?”