“I didn’t do it for you,” she said bitterly at last, “nor for your son, nor for any of you—only for Leigh! Adieu, madame!”
She turned with a gesture at once tragic and beautiful, the gesture of an actress, made passionate by the bitterness of a woman.
A bailiff held the door open for her, looking after her admiringly and curiously, but without deference. Daniel and his mother, watching her, saw the small black figure disappear down the long corridor, saw it silhouetted a moment against the daylight at some distant door, and then it was gone.
“Oh, Dan, take me home!” gasped Mrs. Carter. “I haven’t done anything wrong, but I—I feel like a pickpocket. She makes me feel that way!”
Daniel made no reply. He was aware, at the moment, that his father, bent on getting Leigh home, was fighting his way out with the boy. Judge Jessup had ’phoned for two taxis, as one would not hold the reunited Carters.
“The jury couldn’t agree at first,” the judge explained joyfully; “but Fanchon’s story did it. When they talked it over, they agreed on acquittal. Good thing, eh?”
He tried to be jovial, for he saw the strain, and he was glad when the two loaded taxis disappeared in the dust of the highroad. It seemed to him that, as a family, they were not joyful.
“Willie looks like a death’s head at the feast,” the old man thought, and turned to shake hands with Colonel Denbigh. “I didn’t do it. No, sir, Daniel Carter did. He’s the coming man. You watch him, Colonel.”
Colonel Denbigh nodded thoughtfully.
“I’ll back Dan,” he said. “But how about that poor girl, Jessup?”