The girl opened her pale lips to breathe forth, "I can't tell you! I don't know!"
"Let us assist your memory, Miss Hope, by recalling to you the lady's name. Her name is Ann Cornish."
Herrick's nerves leaped like a frightened horse. And then he saw Christina start from her chair, and, casting round her a wild glance that seemed to cry for help, drop back again and put her hands over her face. A dozen people sprang to their feet.
Mrs. Hope ran to her daughter's side, closely followed by Mrs. Deutch. The two women, crying forth indignation and comfort, and exclaiming that the girl was worn out and ought to be in bed, rubbed Christina's head, and began to chafe her hands. She was half fainting; but when a glass of whiskey had appeared from somewhere and Mrs. Deutch had forced a few drops between her lips, Christina, unlike the heroine of romance whose faints always refuse stimulants, lifted her head and drank a mouthful greedily. She sat there then, breathing through open lips, with a trace of color mounting in her face.
Then the coroner, once more commanding attention, held up a slip of pasteboard. "This visiting-card," he said, "is engraved with Miss Cornish's name, but with no address. It was found leaning against a candlestick on Mr. Ingham's piano, as though he wished to keep it certainly in mind. As a still further reminder, Mr. Ingham himself had written on it in pencil—'At four.'"
Christina, with the gentlest authority, put back her friends. She rose, slowly and weakly, to her feet. "Mr. Coroner," she said, "I wish to correct a false impression; may I?"
