“What would you do?” said her father, walking up and down the room. “What can I or anybody do? It is common law and common justice; if he be found guilty he must swing for it. Personal intercession—”
“Might save him!” said the girl.
“Must not be thought of!” said her father.
“You mean, you may not think of it. But others may—I may. I am a woman, free and untrammelled by either party or personal considerations of any kind. Father, let me try!”
“Cecilia, it is madness to take such a thing upon yourself. How is it possible? What are your plans?”
“I do not know. I have not thought. All is in a haze through which I see that vision of the hangman and the rope Father, let me try!”
Sir Robert thought for a moment, then he said: “Very well, my dear, you shall try, on one condition; that first of all you have an interview with Dubois himself. In fact, for your purpose it is absolutely necessary that you should see him, in order to identify him with the other Dubois you used to know. After that interview, if you still persist in your course, I promise—rash as it certainly seems—to help you. Now hold yourself in readiness to start for the North-West at a moment's notice. I have private information that tells me Dubois will be hung and any intervention on your part or that of anybody else must be set on foot immediately, do you see?”
A few days afterwards Cecilia, unveiled, and dressed in an irreproachable walking costume of gray, was taken to the gloomy prison outside the little northern town of ——, where the prisoner Dubois was confined. There was a bit of tricolor in her hat and her cheeks were very pale—As the beautiful daughter of Sir Robert Maxwell her way was sufficiently paved with politeness as she presented her private order to see the prisoner. Her heart was beating tumultuously and the blood surged round her temples. The turnkey showed her into a small whitewashed room, opposite the cell in which Dubois spent his time and informed her that in compliance with strict orders he would have to be present during the interview, to which Cecilia bent her head in assent; she could not have spoken just then. “It is a strange thing that I am doing,” she thought, “but I shall see Pierre—poor Pierre.” Approaching footsteps were soon heard and the prisoner Dubois entered, escorted by two warders. He started when he saw his visitor, and—stared.
“Mademoiselle,—” he said, evidently trying to recall her name and failing.
“Cecile,” she said, eagerly, “Ma'amselle Cecile you always called me, and I liked it so much better than Cecilia. I think I like it still—Pierre—I—.”