Thus ended the famous trial. Within a week afterwards the fiat was known: and the sentence was commuted into penal servitude for life!
Penal servitude for life! Think of the awful blight to a man in the flower of his age and in the position of Adam Andinnian! And all through one moment's mad act!
[CHAPTER V.]
Unable to get strong
In an invalid's chair by the side of a fire, at midday, reclined Lucy Cleeve. Her face was delicate and thin; her sweet brown eyes had almost an anxious look in them; the white wrapper she wore was not whiter than her cheeks. Mrs. Cleeve was in the opposite chair reading. At the window sat Miss Blake, working some colours of bright silks on a white satin ground.
As Mrs. Cleeve turned the page, she chanced to look up, and saw in her daughter a symptom of shivering.
"Lucy! My darling, surely you are not shivering again!"
"N--o, I think not," was the hesitating answer. "The fire is getting dull, mamma."
Mrs. Cleeve stirred the fire into brightness, and then brought a warm shawl of chenille silk, and folded it over Lucy's shoulders. And yet the August sun was shining on the world, and the blue skies were dark with heat.
The cruel pain that the separation from Karl Andinnian had brought to Lucy, was worse than any one thought for. She was perfectly silent over it, bearing all patiently, and so gave no sign of the desolation within. Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve said in private how reasonable Lucy was, and how well she was forgetting the young man. Miss Blake felt sure that she had never really cared for him: that the love had been all child's play. All through the month of June Lucy had gone about wherever they chose to take her: to flower-shows, and promenades, and dances, and picnics. She talked and laughed in society as others did; and no mortal wizard or witch could have divined she was suffering from the effects of a love-fever, that had been too rudely checked.