Doubtless she had thrown the knife away, although careful search had failed to find it. But that was not strange. The encroaching tide, of course, had carried it out to sea.
Only three friends rallied round her, only three hearts believed in her innocence—they were Dorian, Van Hise, and kindly Mrs. Hill. It was this only that saved her from utter heart-break.
With Dorian to believe in her still, Dorian to love her and champion her cause, there was still a little gleam of light in the awful darkness of her fate.
And Dorian, when he engaged the best lawyer in New York to defend her, had told him that he was willing to sacrifice his fortune and his life in her defense.
"Oh, sir, I am not guilty—I am not guilty!" she cried piteously, lifting her great, appealing eyes to the face of the great lawyer, as he entered her gloomy prison-cell.
"I shall prove your innocence—be sure of that," he answered kindly, and then he bade her speak to him without reserve, confiding all her story to his sympathy, that he might best judge how to defend her cause.
And Nita opened all her sad young heart freely and without reserve. From early childhood, as far back as she could remember, her home had been with old Meg, at her rude cabin by the seashore, an unwilling, ill-treated drudge, beaten and cuffed at every small rebellion of her proud spirit.
At length she grew to girlhood, and then Jack Dineheart, old Meg's son, began to persecute her with offers of marriage. She hated Jack, and at fifteen years old ran away to New York to escape his persecutions.
Providence watched over the friendless girl, and she soon found friends, poor, but kind, who took her into their shabby home, and helped her to find work.
For three years she struggled on bravely, first as a nurse-girl, then in a store, as a cash-girl. Then the good old man who, with his kind wife, had befriended her, fell sick and died. His wife, old and feeble, soon followed him to the grave.