She went forward quickly and knelt by Carlita's side, clasping her waist with both arms.
"I thought you were sleeping," she said, gently, telling her lie as sweetly as if it were unvarnished truth.
"Sleeping!" returned Carlita with a little shiver, her voice heavy and dry and expressionless. "Oh, no! I don't feel as if I should ever sleep again."
"Then it is—true?"
"God! So cruelly true that it seems impossible! Why is it that fact is so much more ghastly in its horror than fiction?"
"He can prove it?" asked Jessica, allowing the question to go unanswered for want of knowledge to meet it.
"Yes," cried Carlita, with the first semblance of passion in her tone. "Prove it the most dastardly crime in all the annals of criminal records. Oh, my God! that man could be so false, so craven a coward!"
"But the act is not what you have to think of now," exclaimed Jessica, feverishly, "it is its punishment. What are you going to do?"
"I have not thought. It seems to me that I am incapable of thought."
"But there is no time to be lost. If he should discover in any way that we suspect him, he would make his escape, and your opportunity would be forever lost. You must act at once."