“Lucas,” said Virginia, “I never listen to gossip. You take that melon to the kitchen!”
“Yes, Miss Jinny, yes, miss, I’s goin’, but Mirandy——”
Virginia thrust her fingers into her ears and retreated. Half laughing, half crying, she threw herself into a chair beside the piano. Her heart was beating stormily, and she hated herself for it. Then she lifted her eyes slowly, reluctantly, to the little picture of William as a child. It still hung beside her piano. The sight of it filled her mind with a strange tumult of thoughts; yet, strangely enough, the vision she saw most clearly was Daniel’s face of pain as she stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. She blushed at the thought of it now.
At that very moment, when Virginia sat with her eyes hidden in her hands, trying to shut out the little tormenting imps that thrust that picture before her, a stranger scene was being staged in the old court-house. The court-room was so densely crowded that even the sweet summer air which came in through the open windows grew close and stifling. The window-sills were full, and the trees outside bore human fruit upon the branches that commanded the upper panes of those windows.
The crowd dimmed the light like a flock of locusts darkening the sun in the east, and some one had lit a green-shaded lamp on the recorder’s desk. The light from it flared up on the face of the prisoner—a pale, boyish face with girlish eyes. Near him sat his family. Mrs. Carter had summoned all her courage to be with her boy at the supreme moment, and Emily was there, too, with tearful eyes and a red nose, looking very unlike the Emily who had painted her lashes. Beside her sat William Carter, then his father and Colonel Denbigh.
William sat with his eyes down and his hands clenched on the arms of his chair. He never looked up, not even when Daniel and Judge Jessup scored a victory and got Mrs. William Carter’s testimony admitted as being relevant to the defense. Bernstein had already told his story—a story of the scandal, and of Corwin’s slanders.
Poor Mrs. Carter hardly dared to look up. She had a terrible sensation of sinking and falling through space, common to nightmare. William’s wife talked about like that! She put out a groping hand, caught Emily’s hot, moist fingers, and held them. They didn’t dare even to look at each other, and Emily sniffed hard to keep back the tears. It was the first time she had heard the details.
The prisoner went white; he realized suddenly that his reckless act had given the scandal huge publicity, that it was ruinous to the woman whom he had tried to defend. Humiliation swept over him, and he sank down in his chair, staring straight in front of him. Like William, he did not look up when Fanchon was called.
There was an expectant stir, followed by a hush. A small figure in black, with a huge hat and a floating veil, came slowly forward and took the oath. Judge Jessup stepped gallantly aside, and Daniel Carter, very pale, very relentless, took the witness.
For the first time William looked up. He looked persistently at his brother, and seemed to be trying to avoid looking at his wife; but he was aware of her, even before she began to answer Daniel’s terrible questions that seemed to drive straight into her past, to lay it open and set it, throbbing and pitiful and full of pain, before the jury, before the packed court-room, before the little world in which the Carters had always lived quiet and sober and respected.