Chapter IX: Part 9

"That it was his wish, but he was not to blame, and she would tell me more some other time. She looked so unutterably wretched that I couldn't ask any questions just then."

"Ah," said Bobby, softly. "I don't believe, poor child! that it was her doing, Eleanor."

"If it was Julian's," she said, "he must have had some good reason." And with that they both fell into thoughtful silence.

"I don't see," was her next objection, uttered musingly, "I don't see how they ever thought of Elizabeth in the first place. It seems such a wildly improbable idea."

"It certainly does," Bobby agreed. "Then Elizabeth, poor child, as it happens, rather put the idea into their heads herself. It seems that she went to the studio the day after the poisoning and insisted upon seeing him. She said she was his wife. D'Hauteville saw her, I believe, but he said nothing about it. It was the elevator man who told the story--he took her up and he heard D'Hauteville call her by her name. He says that D'Hauteville took her into the studio, and when she came out she was crying. And the man vows he heard her say 'I didn't do it, don't think I did it,' or something of the kind."

"Why, I never," broke in Mrs. Bobby, "heard anything so extraordinary. The man must have been drinking. It's impossible that Elizabeth could have done such a thing. Why, it was that day--that day"--she paused and thought--"that day after the murder," she continued, triumphantly, "I remember distinctly going to see her in the afternoon, and she was ill in bed with grippe, and her temperature very high."

"I can believe that," said Bobby, rather grimly, "after what she went through in the morning. For I'm afraid there's not much doubt, Eleanor, that it's true. One of the detectives, too, saw her pass through the hall, and I don't think that D'Hauteville denies it. They want him to testify at the inquest, but so far, they can't get him to say one thing or another."

"He would deny it, of course, if it were false," said Mrs. Bobby, in a low voice. Her husband bent his head. "Well," she said, rallying, "after all, I don't see anything in that. It would be pretty stupid, if she were really guilty, to defend herself before she was accused. No one but a fool would have done that, and the person who sent that poison couldn't have been a fool. And she wouldn't have gone near the studio; that's the last thing the real culprit would have done."

"That's what I say," said Bobby. "It doesn't seem on the face of it the act of a guilty woman. But they have some theory of hysterical remorse, and there is other evidence I haven't heard which fits into that. They say that when she heard that it had really happened she lost her head completely. There have been such cases, you know. Oh, and then another thing. They're comparing the handwriting on the package with the letters"--

"The letters?" broke in Mrs. Bobby, anxiously.

"Yes, that I told you of, you remember--written to him--they've got experts examining them now."

"Ah, well, if the experts have got hold of the case," said Mrs. Bobby, resignedly, "we might as well give up hope. They'd swear away any person's life to prove a theory."

"Well, at least," said Bobby, "it's the life of a young and beautiful girl. That really seemed to me, when I heard all this, the only hope. Even handwriting experts are human." But his wife only sighed despairingly.

"I think," she said, after awhile, "I must go to Elizabeth. I haven't seen her for several days, and she mustn't think that her friends are giving her up."

"You won't--tell her anything?" asked Bobby, anxiously.

"Do you think she doesn't know?"

"She would be the last person, in the natural order of events, to hear of it."

"Then I shall say nothing," said his wife, after a moment's reflection. "You wouldn't, would you?" she added, as she caught an odd look in her husband's eyes.

"I--I don't know." Bobby seemed to reflect. "If--if she were to go abroad just now," he said, doubtfully, "it might not be a bad plan."

"Bobby!" Mr. Van Antwerp's wife faced him indignantly. "You wouldn't have her--run away from all this? You wouldn't have her frightened by anything those people can threaten?" Eleanor Van Antwerp's dark eyes sparkled, she held her head proudly. Her husband looked at her half in doubt, half in admiration.

"You would face it?"

"Yes, if it cost me my life."

The look of admiration on Bobby's face brightened and then faded to despondency. "Ah, well, you are right--theoretically, of course, but--would Elizabeth, do you think, have the same courage? Or, if she had, could you, knowing what you do, take the responsibility of allowing her to face it?"

This was the doubt--the horrible doubt, which troubled Mrs. Bobby as she drove to Elizabeth's home, and at the thought of it her heart failed her. Her husband had judged her rightly--she could be braver for herself than for others. Would it not be better, after all, to suggest to the Misses Van Vorst the desirability of a trip abroad? She looked thoughtfully out of the carriage window. It was a bleak February day, and people in the street had their coat-collars turned up against the chill east wind. The climate of New York at this time is detestable; a change would do any one good. She would go herself to the Riviera and take Elizabeth with her.

Mrs. Bobby had hardly reached this conclusion before the carriage stopped in front of the quiet apartment house in Irving Place where the Van Vorsts were spending the winter. It was an old-fashioned house with an air of sober respectability, that seemed to make such wild thoughts as filled Mrs. Bobby's brain peculiarly strained and improbable, like the hallucinations of a fevered brain. It was a shock, keyed up as she was to the tragic point, to enter the peaceful little drawing-room with its bright coal fire and general air of comfort, and to find Elizabeth prosaically engaged in looking over visiting-cards and invitations. And yet Mrs. Bobby was shocked by the change in her appearance, which every day made more apparent. Her face was haggard, there was a deep purple flush in her cheeks; her lips were dry and feverish, there was an odd, strained look in her eyes. The hand she held out to her visitor burned like fire.

"I'm so glad you came in," she said, with a wan smile. "I've been looking over these stupid things and my head aches. You see, I've neglected my social duties shamefully--not sending cards, or even, I'm afraid, answering some of my invitations. People must think me horribly rude."

"Oh, they know you've been ill," Mrs. Bobby answered vaguely. She sat down, all the wind taken out of her sails, and stared wonderingly at Elizabeth. How could she--how could she look over visiting-cards and talk about invitations, with this terrible danger hanging over her head? Was it possible that she had no suspicions? And yet--did not her eyes betray her? But Mrs. Bobby could not think of any way of introducing the subject of which her mind and heart were full, and there was silence till Elizabeth spoke again.

"It's odd, isn't it," she said languidly, "that Mrs. Lansdowne hasn't asked me to her ball. Have you cards for it?"

"I--I believe so."

"Well, she has left me out," said Elizabeth. Mrs. Bobby started and looked at her with some interest. "I suppose she thinks," Elizabeth went on, "I--I'm not much of an addition just now. I certainly am not, to look at." She laughed a little, in a feeble way. "Of course I shouldn't go," she added, "but it isn't nice to be--left out."

"Perhaps it's a mistake," suggested Mrs. Bobby, not very impressively. She was quite convinced to the contrary.

"Perhaps," Elizabeth acquiesced, "but if so, several other people have done the same thing. The Van Aldens never asked me to their dance, and I haven't had an invitation to a dinner for weeks. People forget one quickly in New York, don't they?" And she made another painful attempt at a laugh.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Bobby, "they think you don't want to go."

"I don't," said Elizabeth, "but they might at least give me the opportunity of refusing." And then there was a pause, in the midst of which Miss Joanna entered.

"Oh, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said, "how glad I am to see you! Do tell Elizabeth that she ought to be in bed. You can see for yourself she has fever. It is the grippe, of course--she has never really got over it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Bobby, looking doubtfully at Elizabeth, "it is the grippe, of course."

"The grippe is a convenient disease," said Elizabeth, in a low tone, "it means--so many things." She took up a sheet of paper and began to write hastily. "It does me good," she said "to employ myself. And I can't stay in bed--it drives me wild." Miss Joanna, as if weary of expostulation, moved to the window.

"Yes, I declare," she announced, in the tone of one who makes a not unexpected discovery, "there are those men again. Every time I look out, one or other of them seems to be watching the house."

"Watching the house?" repeated Mrs. Bobby, startled.

"Yes, that's what it looks like, at least. And the other day, when I went out, one of them stared at me so--most impertinent. I declare, if it goes on, we shall have to make a complaint. And one of them followed Elizabeth--didn't he, my dear?"

"I thought he did," said Elizabeth, indifferently, "but I didn't notice much. I have thought several times lately that there were people following me. Perhaps it is because my head feels so queer."

"What do the men look like?" asked Mrs. Bobby.

"Oh, quite respectable," said Miss Joanna. "They don't look like beggars, certainly. Cornelia thought they looked rather like detectives--she said they made her feel nervous; but that, of course, is quite ridiculous."

"Quite ridiculous," echoed Mrs. Bobby. To herself she was saying, "Ah, that trip abroad!"

"Eleanor has an invitation for Mrs. Lansdowne's ball, auntie," said Elizabeth, suddenly changing the subject, which did not seem to interest her, by the introduction of one that evidently rankled in her mind. "She thinks it is odd I wasn't asked. I told you," she went on, with a bitter smile, "that people are giving me up since my engagement was broken off."

"But that is nonsense," remonstrated Miss Joanna, in distress. "Tell her," she said, turning pleadingly to Mrs. Bobby, "that that isn't so."

Mrs. Bobby started up and took Elizabeth's hand. "I don't know," she said, speaking with strange earnestness, "who gives you up, Elizabeth dear, and I don't care. I never will. Remember that, dear child. I will stand by you whatever happens." And then, as if conscious of having said too much, or fearful perhaps of saying more, Mrs. Bobby swept hastily from the room, leaving her hearers petrified.

Miss Joanna was the first to speak. "How very strange she was!" she said, in a low voice. "What--what do you think she meant?"

Elizabeth was staring vacantly at the door, but at her aunt's words she turned.

"I don't know," she said, "what she meant, but one thing I understand--that my social career is ended." With a little pale smile, she swept aside the cards of invitation, locked them into a drawer and left the room.

_Chapter XXXI_

Mrs. Bobby regained her carriage, and consulting her engagement book, she ordered her coachman to drive her to the house of one of her friends, whose "day at home" it was. It was a sudden resolution. She had gone about very little that winter, since she had no longer the incentive of chaperoning Elizabeth, and had not paid a visit for weeks, on the plea of mourning for an uncle. But now she set her teeth and said to herself that she must mingle with the world to find out, if possible, what the world was saying.

Was it fancy, or did she distinguish, as she stood in the hall of Mrs. Van Alden's house leaving cards, amidst the hum of voices in the drawing-room, words that bore upon her own fevered anxiety? "Shocking affair," and "so she is really involved in it"--surely she heard those sentences. And then the conversation ceased abruptly as the butler drew aside the portière and she stood for a moment on the threshold. Her eyes were bright, her head erect; she glanced around taking mental stock as it were of the company. Five or six women were seated about a blazing wood fire, with an air unusual at functions of this kind of having come to stay and of forming--or this again might have been her fancy--a sort of council of justice. There was Mrs. Lansdowne, to whose ball Elizabeth had not been invited; and there was Sibyl Hartington, and one or two others who knew Mrs. Bobby and did not, as it happened, love her very much. "Enemies," she thought, drawing her breath sharply, "and discussing Elizabeth and me! It's the same thing--I'm sure I feel as if it were I under suspicion." Eleanor Van Antwerp had certainly never known such a feeling before, but her bearing had never been more instinct with the nonchalant confidence of a woman who seems absolutely unconscious of her position, for the reason that it has never been questioned.

"I seem to have interrupted the conversation," she observed, lightly, after she had been rather nervously greeted and kissed by her hostess, and had taken her place in the circle. "Some one was telling a very interesting story--I caught fragments of it as I came in." She glanced her eye round the group. "It was you, Kitty, I think," she said. "Won't you--please--begin the story over again and tell it for my benefit?"

"Kitty," thus appealed to, colored and bit her lip. "Oh, the story isn't really worth repeating," she said, hastily. She had no wish to offend Mrs. Van Antwerp, and was heartily wishing that she had not spoken so loud. Sibyl Hartington helped her out by observing, with her placid smile:

"It's a story about a friend of yours, my dear Eleanor, so Kitty is afraid to tell it."

"About a friend of mine?" said Mrs. Bobby, and she opened her eyes very wide. "Then there's all the more reason," she said, decidedly, "why I should hear it."

Her glance challenged the group, but no one spoke and at last the hostess interposed. "My dear Eleanor, I'm sorry you should have heard anything about it. We were only talking about poor Elizabeth Van Vorst, and regretting that there is all this unfortunate gossip about her. For my part, I don't believe there is a word of truth in what they say, but it is certainly--uncomfortable."

"It makes it hard to know what to do," said Mrs. Lansdowne, a woman with a deep bass voice and an air of being not so much indifferent to, as unconscious of other people's feelings. "I couldn't for instance ask Miss Van Vorst to my ball while there are these queer rumors about her. I was sorry to leave out any friend of yours, Mrs. Van Antwerp; but if a young woman gets herself talked about, no matter how or why, I can't encourage her--it's against my principles. Let the girl behave herself, I say, and keep out of the papers. I'm sure that's simple enough."

"It's not always so simple," said Mrs. Bobby, and though the indignant color had rushed into her cheeks, her tone was seraphic, "not so simple for every one as it is for your daughters, Mrs. Lansdowne." A subdued smile as she spoke went the round of the circle. Fortunately Mrs. Lansdowne was not quick in her perceptions.

"No, it's true," she admitted, "my daughters have had unusual advantages. I can't expect every one to come up to the same standard. But one has to draw the line somewhere, and when a girl has done such queer things as Miss Van Vorst, there seems nothing for it but to drop her."

"But what--what has poor Elizabeth done?" asked Mrs. Bobby, with eyes of innocent wonder, and again there followed an awkward silence.

"Well, you know, Eleanor, they tell very queer stories," the hostess said at last, deprecatingly. "I never pay any attention to gossip, but these things are sometimes forced upon one. Haven't you seen that thing in _Scandal_?"

"I don't," said Mrs. Bobby, unmoved, "read '_Scandal_,' Mary."

"And _Chit Chat_," chimed in some one else. "There was a long paragraph in _Chit Chat_. It seems that she was mixed up in some way in that dreadful poisoning case. They say that she was actually married to that young Halleck."

"At the same time that she was engaged to Julian Gerard," said Mrs. Hartington, with her calm smile. "It's no wonder that he, poor man, when he found it out, got out of the affair as best he could."

Mrs. Bobby looked steadily at the speaker. "As a friend of Mr. Gerard's, Sibyl," she said, "I can state on his authority that the engagement was broken by Miss Van Vorst."

Sibyl Hartington's calm, faintly amused smile again rippled across her face. "I never doubted, my dear Eleanor," she said, "that Mr. Gerard is a gentleman."

The entrance of another visitor at that moment was not altogether unwelcome to Mrs. Bobby, who felt that she was being worsted; but the new-comer immediately continued the same subject.

"I've just been hearing the most extraordinary news," she exclaimed, sitting on the edge of her chair, and too much excited to notice Mrs. Bobby's presence, "I heard it at luncheon. They say that Elizabeth Van Vorst"--But here the speaker suddenly caught sight of Mrs. Bobby, and stopped short.

"Well, what do they say?" said Mrs. Bobby, with rather a bitter smile. "Don't keep us in suspense, Miss Dare, and above all, don't mind my feelings. I would rather know the worst of this."

"Well, I don't believe there is any truth in it. They say that she is really seriously implicated in that dreadful poisoning case; that the police have letters she wrote to Halleck, and all sorts of unpleasant things. But of course it's impossible--a girl like that, whom we all know!"

"Do we?" said Mrs. Hartington, softly. "Do you think that we, any of us, know much about her? You didn't, Eleanor, did you?"--turning to Mrs. Bobby--"You just took her up in that charming, impulsive way of yours--didn't you?--because people in the Neighborhood didn't have much to do with her, and you felt sorry for her?"

Mrs. Bobby made a scornful little gesture. "You flatter me, Sibyl," she said. "I'm afraid I'm not so charitable as all that. I 'took up' Elizabeth Van Vorst, as you say, because I liked her, and for no other reason. It was for my own pleasure entirely that I asked her to stay with me, and I have never regretted it."

Mrs. Hartington gave a barely perceptible shrug of the shoulders. "I congratulate you," she said. "It was a rash action, some people thought at the time. A girl whom you knew so slightly, whose mother was such an impossible person--or at least, so they say. I don't of course," she went on, in her soft, drawling tones, "know much about it myself, but it does make all this gossip seem less extraordinary--doesn't it?"

"Why, yes, of course, that accounts for it," said Mrs. Lansdowne, looking relieved. "That sort of thing runs in families. A girl who has a queer mother is sure to be queer herself and get herself talked about."

"I never thought her very good style," some one who had not yet spoken now found courage to observe. "Her hair is so conspicuous. I never could understand why men seemed to admire her."

Mrs. Hartington raised her eye-brows. "Ah, the men!" she said, with serene scorn. "She is exactly the sort of girl who would appeal to men."

Mrs. Bobby felt that she had stayed as long as the limit of human endurance would permit. She rose to her feet, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brilliant, her voice rang out with crystal clearness. "It's hardly necessary for me to tell you," she said, "that Elizabeth Van Vorst is my most intimate friend. I love her very dearly and always shall. What her mother may have been is no affair of mine. But as for the men liking her"--she turned suddenly to Mrs. Hartington--"they do like her, Sibyl, and I think they show good taste. But if you mean the inference you seem to draw from that"--she paused and drew her breath quickly--"why, it's not very flattering, I think, to either men or women."

Mrs. Hartington gave a short little laugh. "My dear, I'm not drawing inferences one way or another. I merely stated a fact--complimentary, one might think, to your protegée. But you take things so seriously!"--She drew herself up with an air of some annoyance.

Mrs. Bobby's hands were tightly locked together inside her muff, she faced the group appealingly, her dark eyes wandering from one to the other. "Certainly, I take this thing seriously," she said, and there was a thrill of earnestness in her voice which moved more than one of her hearers. "It's no light matter for me to hear my friend spoken of--like this. I had Elizabeth Van Vorst with me all last winter, I feel as if I knew her like my own sister. I believe in her implicitly, no matter what any one may say. And if--if some of you"--instinctively her eyes fastened upon one or two whom she felt she was carrying with her--"if you would try to think the best, give her the benefit of the doubt, show that women can stand by one another--sometimes"--Her voice faltered and she broke off suddenly; there were tears glistening in her eyes as she held out her hand to her hostess. "Forgive me, Mary," she said. "I don't want to make a scene. But I can't help feeling strongly, and in this case I want every one to know exactly how I feel." And with that she left the room quickly before any one could speak, yet conscious as she went of a subtle wave of sympathy, which seemed to have made itself felt since her entrance.

"But it's useless--useless," she said sadly to her husband when she got home. "You might as well try to stop the course of a torrent as fight against the world's disapproval, when it is once roused against any poor, defenceless girl. And it isn't as if she were a great personage, or even as if she were still engaged to Julian! They've nothing to gain by standing by her. Yet there were one or two, I think, even of those women this afternoon, who felt with me. And at least"--she consoled herself a little--"at least they shall see that she has friends!"

"She'll need them, poor girl. The--the inquest--I've just heard--is coming off next week." He took up a paper knife and played with it, while he stole a furtive glance at his wife. "I think you had better--prepare Elizabeth," he said.

"Prepare her?" she repeated anxiously, as he paused.

"For some confoundedly unpleasant questions! Yes. Have you the strength to tell her?" His eyes questioned her anxiously. She was white to the lips, but she met them without flinching.

"One can always find strength."

"It's confoundedly hard, I know." Bobby began to pace up and down helplessly. "You don't know how I hate to have you mixed up in all this, Eleanor," he said. "I'd give anything to have you out of it. Wouldn't it be better for you to go abroad for awhile?"

"And desert Elizabeth? My dear Bobby, you wouldn't have me do that?"

"Well, you can't help her, you know," he urged.

"I can show that I believe in her. And, thank Heaven! social position does count for something. It may help me to fight Elizabeth's battles."

"It doesn't count for much, unfortunately, before the law."

"Not theoretically, no," said his wife, sceptically. "But practically--it counts with every one and everywhere. By the way," she added, struck with a sudden idea, "what sort of man is the District Attorney? I might ask him to dinner." And she looked prepared to send the invitation on the spot.

"My dear Eleanor, I'm afraid it's too late for that now. The thing to do now, since matters have gone so far, is to prove Elizabeth's innocence, and for that, the first step is to prepare her, so that she won't be taken unawares. Her aunts too--they must be told, I suppose. Poor things, I believe it will kill them!"

"People don't die so easily. It would be more merciful, I sometimes think, if they did." She sat and thought for a moment. "I think I had better go there at once," she said, at last, nervously. "I couldn't sleep to-night with this hanging over my head."

And so, for the second time that day, she drove to the Van Vorsts' apartment, feeling that her unexpected appearance in itself must prepare them for some calamity. And indeed the telling proved easier than she feared. She saw Elizabeth alone, and sat holding the girl's hand, trying by many tender circumlocutions to break the force of the blow. But Elizabeth understood almost immediately.

"They think I sent the poison--is that it?" she said, going at once to the point which her friend was approaching so carefully. "Well, that isn't so strange. Sometimes I feel," she added, wearily, and putting her hand to her head, "as if I had done it myself. I think I--I might have done it."

"Elizabeth, Elizabeth, what do you mean?"

"Because I wished it, you know," Elizabeth went on to explain quite calmly. "I was married to him, and I wished that he might die, so that no one would ever know it, I didn't tell any one but Julian--I wouldn't have told him if I could have helped it. That was the reason he gave me up--because I told him that I had been secretly married all the time. He was angry because I hadn't told him before."

"But," interrupted Mrs. Bobby, with intense anxiety, "you did tell him, at last?"

"Yes, of course I told him," said Elizabeth, in surprise. "I told him New Year's Eve. Why else should he have given me up?"

"Then," cried Mrs. Bobby, rising to her feet in her excitement, "that seems to me an unanswerable argument. If you had--had expected Paul Halleck's death, you certainly wouldn't have told Julian Gerard of your marriage. That's clear as daylight. Oh, Elizabeth, how fortunate that you told him!"

"Fortunate?" said Elizabeth, listlessly. "I don't see that it is very fortunate, since he has given me up and will never forgive me."

"But it may save you." Elizabeth looked at her blankly. "Oh, my dear child," cried Mrs. Bobby, "don't you understand that they suspect you of--of the murder?"

"You don't mean that they would put me in prison?"

Mrs. Bobby only answered by her silence. Elizabeth sat staring at her for a moment, then the color rushed into her white face, her eyes flashed. "How would they dare do that," she cried, "when I am innocent?"

"Of course you are," said Mrs. Bobby. "No one but a fool would think otherwise. And we will prove it, never fear. But you mustn't talk any more of this morbid nonsense about being guilty of his death and all that. I know what you mean well enough, but the general public doesn't understand such psychological subtleties. And besides, it's not true. The guilty person had no thought of doing you a service--be sure of that. Paul Halleck would have died, my dear, if you had never known him. And now keep up a brave heart, Elizabeth. Your friends will stand by you, and when all this is over--happily over, you will look back upon it as a bad dream--nothing more."

Mrs. Bobby had almost talked herself into feeling the confidence she expressed; but Elizabeth listened languidly, with drooping head. All color had faded again from her face; it looked haggard, worn; her hands plucked nervously at some fringe on her gown. When she wiped her eyes at the last words, the smile she conjured up was piteous.

"It's a dream," she murmured, "that is lasting--a terribly long time."

_Chapter XXXII_

There is an old prison well in the heart of the city, which presents a grim, mediæval front to the busy world outside. Elizabeth knew that it existed, but had never seen it. She did not know even where it was, till she found herself condemned to spend eight months within its walls.

This was after the inquest, when the evidence had gone as she had seen herself, very much against her. It was a curious feeling--this bewildered perception of a net closing round her, whose meshes she had woven herself. The verdict of the jury was hardly a surprise. And then they broke to her gently the fact that bail was refused, and they brought her across the Bridge of Sighs, the name of which gave her an odd little thrill, into the prison.

The inmates of The Tombs are mostly of the lowest class. Such a prisoner as Miss Van Vorst was disconcerting to wardens and matrons alike. The situation was unprecedented, they hardly knew how to deal with it.

Elizabeth was placed in one of the ordinary cells; no other indeed was to be had. It was small and dark, and had for furniture a cot-bed, a faucet set in the wall, and one cane chair. Light and air--what there was of either--came in through the corridor, above and below the iron grating which barred the doorway. There was no window.

Elizabeth, to whom an abundance of light and air had been one of the necessities of life, who had a passion for space and luxury, for fresh, dainty surroundings, looked about her in blank dismay. Yet she said nothing. From the first she seemed to school herself to a silent stoicism, which her friends called courage and her enemies insensibility, and which may have been a combination of both. The last two months had been crowded with so many startling events, so intense, conflicting a tumult of thought and emotion, that her capacity for acute suffering was for the moment exhausted.

Yet the mere physical horror that the cell inspired her with was very great. The first time that the key was turned upon her, and she was left entirely alone, with the twilight coming on, with no power to free herself, nothing to do but wait for the matron's return, she felt as she had felt once when for some childish offence, she had been locked into a dark closet. Now as then she threw herself against the door, trying with fierce, unreasoning efforts to force the lock, uttering hoarse cries for help. Then the door had been quickly opened, her aunts had let her out with remorseful tears, and the experiment had never been repeated. Now no help came to her, and she was left to adapt herself to the situation as best she might. The struggle left deep marks on her young face, a look in her eyes which they never afterwards lost.

There were many ways in which the prison routine was softened in her favor. Social distinctions count, as Mrs. Bobby had said, with every one and everywhere. Money is powerful, even in The Tombs. The warden and the other officials reaped in those days a harvest of gold coins from Mrs. Bobby.

A more comfortable bed, a hand-mirror, all sorts of forbidden luxuries, found their way into Elizabeth's cell. Neither warden nor matron apparently recognized their existence. She was permitted to receive her visitors alone, to have a light in her cell after dark, to walk for an hour a day in the corridor or the court. At these times she would see those other women, her fellow-prisoners, huddled together in an abject group, and feel thankful that at least she was not obliged to mingle with them. Her meals were served to her in her cell, and she could order what she wanted. Her friends sent her constantly an abundance of fruit and flowers.

The people who came to see her, and there were many of them, used to go away wondering at her calmness. They went prepared for tragedy, and Elizabeth received them as she might in her own drawing-room. They noticed no change in her, except that her head had never been held so proudly, and she had never looked so pale. But there were no confidences, no tears, no consciousness apparently of the extraordinary state of things. Even to her aunts, even to Eleanor Van Antwerp, she maintained this attitude of proud reserve. They could only guess at the thoughts which lay beneath it. There were times, indeed, when she did not think, when her brain would seem dazed. In those days she would read eagerly all the books that people brought her; read them through from beginning to end, but she had never any idea of what they were about.

There was one form of reading which no one suggested, which she did not, apparently, think of herself. No one brought her a newspaper, and she never asked to see one. Perhaps she did not realize how much her case was discussed, perhaps she realized it only too well. Her aunts were thankful for her lack of curiosity. They could not themselves open a paper, or enter a street-car, without an agony of dread as to what they might see or hear.

For the yellow journals, of course, were exploiting the affair--it was Mrs. Bobby's opinion, indeed, that it had been started originally on their account, for the enlivenment of a dull season. This may or may not be true; but certainly they made the most of it. They published Elizabeth's picture, and long accounts of her conquests. There were pictures, too, of her grandmother, that stately beauty whose fame was traditional, and of old Van Vorsts who had held important offices, and served city and state with credit in colonial and revolutionary times. Then, by contrast, there were accounts of her mother's past and her mother's kindred through several generations of moral and social disrepute. The Neighborhood was overrun by disguised reporters who made copious notes of local items, and took photographs of the Van Vorst Homestead, of the village, of Bassett Mills and even of the church--thereby causing the Rector's wife nervous spasms in her anxiety lest any of Elizabeth's moral perversions should be laid to the account of the religious teaching that she had received. Bassett Mills was all a-flutter in its excitement over this gratuitous advertisement. But in the Neighborhood--the staid, aristocratic old Neighborhood--there was a feeling of humiliation, a presentiment that it could never recover from the disgrace of such notoriety.

And yet, in spite of all discredit, what a subject for conversation--in the Neighborhood as well as Bassett Mills! Nothing else was talked of at the various tea-parties, of which so many had never been given before. People who had guests took them over on Sunday afternoons to the Homestead, and wandered about the grounds relating the family history, while the strangers stared with interest at the old house, and the horse-shoe on the door. There was a dreary look about the place for the Misses Van Vorst were not coming back that summer, and the old gardener left in charge had not the heart under the circumstances to keep it in order. Grass grew in the gravel-walks, the flowers in the garden hung their heads, the foliage was sadly in need of clipping. A shadow seemed to brood over house and grounds, as in the day of old Madam Van Vorst.

In town, where there were more things to talk about, the great poisoning case still took precedence of all other subjects, and society was divided on account of it into warring camps. There were those--a very large number--who followed Mrs. Hartington's lead, and spoke of Elizabeth as a sort of adventuress, who had thrust herself into circles which she had no right to enter; a party which disowned her entirely and believed implicitly in her guilt. But there was another party, smaller perhaps but not less influential, which took uncompromisingly the opposite side. The people who composed it were friends, many of them, of Mrs. Van Antwerp, and there were others who had cared for Elizabeth for her own sake, and again others to whom the romantic facts of the case appealed irresistibly, inducing them to espouse her cause regardless of reason. These all spoke of her as a suffering martyr and regarded her imprisonment as an outrage. They did not discuss the evidence, but met all doubts with the one unanswerable argument of their own intuitions.

But the first side had in point of logic, so much the best of it! This conviction intruded itself reluctantly on Eleanor Van Antwerp's mind, as she looked up from an exhaustive summary of the case for the prosecution. The article presented, in clear, remorseless details, all the links in the terrible chain of evidence--her hasty marriage, and then her repentance; her efforts to buy off her husband; the trouble she had to supply him with money; her evident fear of his betraying her to Gerard; her refusal to name her wedding day, till she had in sheer desperation decided on the murder; then when the thing was at last accomplished, her sudden remorse, her strange actions; the rumor that she had in the first excitement confessed her guilt before witnesses; the description too, of the woman who had bought the flask, and which fitted Elizabeth exactly in height, coloring and general appearance; the resemblances which the experts were said to have discovered between her letters and the handwriting on the package--never was chain more strongly forged! And what, the article further demanded, had her friends to offer in rebuttal but her social position, her youth and her beauty?

"It's not much, certainly," Mrs. Bobby's anxiety admitted. "And yet a good deal, too," her aristocratic instincts involuntarily responded; "and will have their weight with the jury," her cynicism added. But then again despair overwhelmed her, and she put the unavailing question: "Bobby, is there--do you think there is any hope?"

Bobby stared back at her, his face hardly less white than hers.

"God only knows, Eleanor! If she were just a man, or even an ordinary woman, I should say 'no;' but for a young girl, there's always a chance. Let her"--he dropped his hand on the table beside him with a deep sigh--"let her look as pretty as she can. It seems to me about the only hope."

"She won't look pretty," his wife returned, with a little sob. "She is just the shadow of her old self; if she stays in that place much longer, I believe it will kill her. Bobby," she cried, with a sudden burst of indignation, staring up at him with tragic eyes, "if that child dies--there, it will be murder! And yet you say the law is just!"

Bobby had said so much in the last few weeks in perfunctory defence of the law that he was weary of the subject, and so he attempted no further protestations, but watched his wife sadly as she walked impatiently to and fro; a slight, childlike creature, her cheeks flushed, her eyes brilliant with impotent anger, dashing herself as it were against impenetrable barriers. Only once before in her life had Eleanor Van Antwerp been confronted with an obstacle that did not yield to her wishes. That was when the baby died, and she had resigned herself to what she believed to be Divine Providence. But this seemed mere human stupidity.

"If only men were not so logical!" she exclaimed, despairingly. "Women, if they intended to get her off, would do it, no matter what the evidence was; but men!--they are so bound hand and foot by their sense of justice, their respect for law, and Heaven knows what! that they are quite capable, even if they believe her innocent, of finding her guilty, just because the evidence was against her."

"Well that's what they're supposed to do," Bobby put in, deprecatingly, "they've got to abide by the evidence." It was the twentieth time that he had made this explanation, and for the twentieth time, she brushed it aside.

"What does it matter," she demanded, "about the evidence, when any one with common-sense must _know_ the girl is innocent? But I see how it is, Bobby," she went on, her lip quivering. "You don't really believe in her the way that I do. You have doubts--at the bottom of your heart you have doubts. Tell me the truth, and I'll try to forgive you--_haven't_ you?"

She stopped before him, her dark eyes, fastened upon his, seemed to read his soul, but he answered steadily: "Eleanor, upon my honor, I believe in that child's innocence as you do. I'd give anything in the world to get her off. (Yes, and I would," he added to himself "for your sake, if she had committed twenty murders.")

She drew a long sigh of relief. "Oh, Bobby, you _are_ nice," she said, gratefully. "You've been very good to me all this time--never once saying 'I told you so,' when the whole thing has been all my fault for not taking your advice."

"Your fault, you poor child! How do you make that out?"

"If I had never asked Elizabeth to stop with me," she said tremulously, "all this wouldn't have happened. You warned me--don't you remember?--and you were right. I've come to the conclusion, Bobby, that you generally _are_ right and I wrong."

Her tone of submission was as edifying as it was surprising, but Bobby with unwonted quickness cut it short. "Nonsense!" he said almost roughly. "You were right in that case, as you generally are, and I was wrong; and no harm would have come of it if Elizabeth--well, I don't want to hit people when they're down," he said, apologetically "but if she had only been frank with us from the first, all this wouldn't have happened. My dear"--this in response to a reproachful look from his wife--"I don't mean to be hard on her, but I can't hear you blame yourself for what has been poor Elizabeth's own fault, helped out by a most extraordinary train of circumstances."

"She was to blame, certainly," faltered his wife, reluctantly, "but I can understand--I believe I should have done the same in her place."

"No, Eleanor," said Bobby, briefly and with some sternness, "you would not."

"It's true," she admitted, "I don't think I could keep a secret if I tried. But then neither apparently could Elizabeth--to the bitter end. That is one thing I can't understand," she went on, "why you don't any of you attach more importance to the fact that she told Julian herself."

"Because," said Bobby, slowly, "we have only her own word that she did so."

"But her aunts"--began Mrs. Bobby.

"They can't know what passed between them. What people think is that he discovered the marriage and charged her with it. It seems improbable that after deceiving him so long she should suddenly repent. And of course he would shield her as far as possible, so his version goes for nothing."

"All the same, I should like to hear it," said Mrs. Bobby decidedly. "If I were Mr. Fenton, I should summon him at once as witness." (Mr. Fenton was the counsel for the defence.)

"Why, Fenton thought of it," said Bobby. "He spoke about it to Elizabeth, and she cried out 'Oh, not he--not he of all people' in such a way that he--well, he thought he'd better not send for him, for fear of discovering something that would go very much against us. It did look badly, you know, that she should dread Gerard's evidence so."

Mrs. Bobby's reply to this was unexpected. "Is Mr. Fenton considered a clever lawyer, dear?" she asked.

"The best that money can get," said Bobby, somewhat taken aback. "But why, Eleanor?"--

"Oh, well--I hope he knows more about law than he does about women, that's all. Now I say, send for Julian at once."

"Well, you know, Eleanor, I can't help thinking that if he knew of any evidence in her favor he'd have turned up of his own accord before this. It looks badly, I think--his staying away; as if he were afraid of being questioned if he came."

Mrs. Bobby sat for a moment reflecting deeply, her brows knit. "I don't believe," she said, suddenly, "that he knows a thing about it. Where is he, do you know?"

"Some one saw him ages ago in London," said Bobby. "Goodness knows where he is now. But in all events, he must have heard."

"I doubt it. It happened, you know, while he was on the ocean, and by the time he had landed, the first excitement was over, and there was nothing about it in the papers for a long time. So that, even if he bought an American paper, he might not see anything about it, and the foreign ones of course would have nothing--you know how little interest they take in us over there. Oh, it might easily happen--strange as it seems, that he has heard nothing."

"But why is it, do you think," said Bobby, "that Elizabeth doesn't want him here?"

"My dear Bobby, how dull men are! Of course, she doesn't want to call upon him in a time like this. She's too proud. But nothing will prevent him--if I know him rightly--from coming at once, if there is anything he can do to help her."

"Well, if you think it's any good, I'll send a detective after him," said Bobby, with the composure of one to whom money is no object.

_Chapter XXXIII_

The services of a detective proved imperative in finding Gerard. His banks when applied to by cable, regretted to reply that they did not know his address. He had left no directions to have his mail forwarded. Apparently his one idea had been to efface himself and break with some home ties. It was a proceeding which did not altogether surprise Mrs. Bobby, who understood the phase of mind which it indicated; but to Mr. Fenton it was proof positive of his own suspicions, that Gerard dreaded to be summoned as witness on behalf of the woman whom he had once loved.

"She is glad to have him out of the way," thought the astute lawyer to himself. "No doubt he has evidence which she is afraid of. Yes, she lied no doubt when she said she had told him herself of her marriage, just as she lied when she said she couldn't remember what she had done on the twenty-third of December. She remembered--I could see that plainly--very well." The counsel for the defence was reluctantly convinced of his client's guilt, but he had good hopes of saving her nevertheless, though he did not think it was to be done by means that were strictly legal. He said little and accepted Gerard's disappearance with philosophy, even though he did not absolutely discourage Bobby Van Antwerp from sending a detective on his track. It could at least, the lawyer argued, do no harm, since he was quite certain that Gerard however urgently summoned would not come. Bobby lost heart and would have let the matter drop, but his wife's influence again carried the day. The detective started, with urgent directions from Mrs. Bobby to find the witness at any cost, and equally urgent directions from Mr. Fenton by no means to find him, unless his evidence were desirable.

Meanwhile the summer came and life in The Tombs assumed a different phase.

The atmosphere in Elizabeth's cell grew unbearable, and the warden allowed her to spend a large part of her time in the prison court. Here, too, since the intense heat, the other women assembled for an hour every day, and she was brought in actual contact with them for the first time. The court was large, and she could sit on the bench which the warden had placed for her in the shadow of the wall. And yet, though she tried to, she could not ignore them; she found herself, little by little, observing them, taking even some faint interest in them. She grew to know them by name, and would talk to some of them, asking timid questions, partly with an instinctive desire to get away from her own thoughts, partly with the feeling that they were human beings, in trouble like herself. There was a lurking sympathy in her heart for even the most depraved. She would share with them her fruit and flowers, or make little presents of one kind or another, even though the matron, discovering this assured her that they were in many cases quite unworthy of her kindness.

"They won't thank you for it, Miss," she said "they won't indeed. They're just as likely as not to say the worst things of you behind your back."

Elizabeth stared at her thoughtfully for a moment beneath knit brows.

"I don't know that I care about their thanking me," she said at last, "and even if they're not worthy, that doesn't make it any the less hard for them, does it?"

To the matron this sentiment had a taint of immorality and she drew herself up primly. "Why, on that principle, Miss," she said, "there's no use at all in good behavior." Her point of view was the correct one, of course--at least for a prison official. But it was natural that Elizabeth, in revolt against the hard judgment of the world, should take the opposite side. And certainly the women, even the roughest of them, seemed to be grateful in their own way for her kindness, and respected absolutely the intangible barrier between them. There were one or two, indeed, younger and more imaginative than the rest, who would follow her with wistful eyes as she passed, or flush in involuntary, awkward delight if she spoke to them; to whom her presence in their midst appealed irresistibly, touching some latent sense of romance, and lending a new interest to the prison routine. There was something wraith-like, spiritual about her, as she grew from day to day, more frail, her face more thin and wasted, her eyes more unnaturally large and strained, and the shadows beneath them deeper and darker. Her gowns, since the hot weather began, were always white, unrelieved by color even at throat or belt. Only her hair made a gleam of brightness, the more vivid for the pallor of her face and the grayness of the prison walls.

It was this soft, wavy hair at which visitors to The Tombs looked most curiously, recognizing one of the strong pieces of evidence against her. There was a number of visitors to The Tombs, even on those hot summer days; people who only stared at one prisoner and asked before they left one question of the prison officials, which met the one answer. The warden--a gruff old man, hardened by long contact with the lowest offenders--seemed when his turn came to hesitate.

"Guilty, she?" he repeated, staring up at the questioner with his shrewd old eyes. "Well, there ain't a guilty person in The Tombs--not to hear them talk; but--she"--he paused a moment. "She never says nothing; but--bless you"--carried beyond himself by an unwonted burst of sentiment--"I'd as soon suspect an angel from heaven."

"Ah, he has had a large fee," the more cynical would observe as they left, and it was true. But the canny old warden was quite capable of accepting all the money in the world, and reserving the right to his own opinion, which he had stated in this case with absolute honesty. And it was shared, moreover, by the entire prison,--jailers and criminals alike.

Elizabeth grew conscious of the general sentiment and it cheered her more than its intrinsic value seemed to warrant. For it was based on no tangible evidence, was the result of a hundred unconsidered, unimportant words and actions, the effect of which, to those who had not seen or heard them, it was hard to explain; and it could penetrate little to the outside world. But she felt strangely indifferent to the outside world. Her horizon was bounded by the prison walls.

One day, sitting dull and languid on her bench in the shadow of the wall, she chanced to overhear a fragment of a conversation between the warden and a visitor. They stood within the door of the office, and their voices came to her distinctly. "I tell you," the warden said, apparently bringing his argument to a conclusion, "they'll never put a woman--let alone a young and pretty one like her--in the electric chair."

"Ah, but if she's guilty,"--the visitor's voice demanded. And then, with an odd grunt from the warden, they passed on. She could not hear the rest.