Rose was waiting on the piazza. Her face was very calm, yet to John's keen eye, it bore a look of desperately mustered self-control. With the ready intuition of her sex, she had divined far more completely than her brother how desperate and dangerous was the struggle upon which he was entering, and she was determined to give him every advantage that sympathy, poise, and unwavering loyalty could supply.
"It's all right, Rose, all right," he hastened to assure her, as the steps were mounted. "A mere extravagance of an excited woman that the papers have made into a great sensation. It will melt away like fog. We are helpless for a few days until I can demand and receive a hearing upon preliminary trial. That will show that they have no case at all. Until then, we must simply stand and be strong."
Rose was already in her brother's arms, yet his speech, instead of reassuring her, made the tears flow.
"It is so—so humiliating to think of you defending yourself," she protested, "to hear you talk of their inability to make out a case. It seems so—so lowering, as if you were going to be put on trial just like a criminal."
"Why," replied John, "that's just what it all means. Just like a criminal!"
He said the thing strongly enough, but after it came a choke in the throat. He had not really comprehended this before. He had thought of making his defense from the standpoint of the popular idol that he was. As a matter of fact, he was going to trial like any criminal. His vantage ground was merely that of the prisoner at the bar. This prepared him for what Rose had to say next; for subtly perceiving that her brother had sustained an additional shock, her own self-control revived. Wiping her eyes, she turned to lead the way within.
"They," she said solemnly, "are waiting in the study."
"They?" inquired Hampstead.
"There are four men in there," Rose replied. "They want," and her voice threatened to break, "they want you!"
At this bald putting of the horrible fact, Tayna burst into a wail of woe and flung her arms about her uncle, whom she had followed into the hall.