"You insist on remaining silent?" the President was saying.
"Wait a little! Wait a little while!" she murmured, but so low that even Raymond could not catch the words.
"Gentlemen of the Jury, have you any questions to ask the jury?" He paused and turned to M. Valmorin.
"Thank you, no, M. the President," bowed the Prosecutor.
"Has the counsel for the defense anything to ask the witness?"
The instinct of the cross-examiner triumphed over the nervousness of youth.
"The witness has mentioned that my client had been drinking absinthe," said Raymond, rising. His voice was sure and steady. "I should like to know whether he thinks she was intoxicated."
The President nodded and turned to Victor.
"You hear the question? Was the prisoner drunk or sober when you ran into the room and found her with the revolver in her hand?"
Victor shifted uneasily and appeared to hesitate.
"Well, she was very much excited," he said. "There's no doubt about that, M. the President Her eyes were like a crazy woman's and her face was red and she didn't seem to know what she was doing."
A stir and murmur from the benches told Raymond that the audience credited him with a point scored.
"Would you say she was drunk?" he insisted.
"Well, some would say she was and some would say she wasn't," replied the witness, falling back on his never-failing formula.
A titter ran through the court at this conservative answer, and the president frowned.
"What wouldyousay?" demanded Raymond. Victor's confusion was complete.
"I—I wouldn't say!" he stammered. Raymond turned back to his desk with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Counsel for the defense, have you any more questions to ask the witness?" demanded the court.
"No, M. the President," was the reply.
"Stand down!" commanded the President "Clerk of the court, call the next witness!"
The next witness was Sergeant Fontaine, the gendarme who had arrested Jacqueline. He talked in jerky, military tones, and gave his evidence as if he were dictating an official report He told of arresting her in the hotel and taking her to the prison.
"Did she say anything while you were taking her off?" asked the court.
"I did most of the talking," he replied. "I asked her why she had killed Laroque and she said she had done it to prevent him doing a disgraceful thing which would have brought unhappiness and despair to some one she loved. I tried to make her say more, but she wouldn't. She said that she wouldn't say another word to anybody, and she didn't."
No one had any questions to ask the witness, though it was plain from the manner in which some of the jurors gazed at the prisoner that the policeman's testimony had made an impression. They were the usual run of jurors—plain middle-class tradesmen with a rather better than average intelligence; and, as Raymond looked them over, he felt that there was grim work ahead if he would upset their judgment and make them follow the impulse of emotion. He did not think he could do it.
Victor and the sergeant were the only two witnesses, and the President turned to Jacqueline when the gendarme had taken a seat beside Victor on the bench reserved for witnesses.
"Before calling on the Public Prosecutor," he said solemnly, "I ask you for the last time, prisoner, in your own interest, to tell the jury why you committed this crime. You told the policeman who arrested you, and who has just given his evidence, that you killed Laroque to prevent him from committing an infamous and abominable act which would have caused trouble to some one you loved. To what act did you allude? To whom would it have brought trouble? Knowledge of the reasons which caused you to commit the murder may have an important influence on the jury in reaching a verdict. You refuse, to speak? You have made up your mind to say nothing——"
He paused; and then:
"M. the Prosecutor!" he announced.
M. Valmorin rose slowly and bowed to the President, and then to the jury. It was an old story with him—the murder of a degenerate man by a fallen woman. He had only to go over an old formula.
"There you are!" whispered M. Perissard to his colleague. "It is practically over!"
"Gentlemen of the jury, I shall not keep you long," began M. Valmorin, in a gentle, pleasant voice. "The crime on which you have to give your verdict is simple and baneful. The woman has killed her lover—but who is this woman? What is her real name? Where does she come from? Who is she? We do not know! Since her arrest the prisoner has refused to answer all questions that have been put to her. She has not spoken a syllable in reply to the Examining Magistrate, and you have seen for yourselves that here in court she has insisted on remaining obstinately silent, although her silence cannot but harm her case—if she has the slightest shred of defense!
"There is sometimes an explanation of a murder—if not an excuse for it—to be found in the motives that inspired it. Murders are committed for reasons of money, for reasons of love, for reasons of jealousy, or to quench a thirst for vengeance. And the passion which arms the criminal's hand, which disturbs her power of reasoning and which makes her act without thinking—this, to some extent, diminishes her responsibility and the horror which the act of murder makes every man feel."
The jurors were leaning forward, their eyes fastened on his face and their reasons hypnotized by the musical, confident voice.
"When one or other of these reasons is brought forward, justice may be tempered with mercy. But how can you be asked to find excuses for an act, the motive of which the prisoner refuses to disclose? By this very refusal we may be forgiven for believing—nay, we are almost forced to believe that they are the worst possible motives. I distrust, for my part, the impenetrable mystery in which the prisoner has robed herself, and I can feel no pity for a guilty woman whose lips have not uttered a word of repentance!"
A loud, clear voice rang suddenly and sharply through the court.
"I will speak presently!"
A burst of laughter would not have been more disconcerting! M. Valmorin stopped, and every eye in the court was on the prisoner. Half of the men in the great room had started to their feet. The attitude and the look of suffering and the dark, hunted eyes were not visibly changed, but it was undoubtedly the woman who had spoken. The prosecutor bit his lip. Ten seconds before he had read in every eye in the jury-box, and in nearly every face in the courtroom, a placid acquiescence. Now there was pity in the glance of more than one of the twelve who would judge his case, and he would have to win them away from it. This would be harder than gaining their confidence at the outset had been.
The usher hammered the top of his desk until the excitement died away and there was order in court once more. Then M. Valmorin began the work of repairing the damage.
"As I was saying, gentlemen of the jury, we know nothing about the woman Laroque," he continued, calmly, as if he considered of little importance the sensation that accompanied the dramatic interruption. "We have found no proof that she was ever a resident of France.
"In Buenos Ayres it is not known where she came from. During her stay in South America she did not, so far as we can learn, offend any of the laws of the country. In the month of March she took passage on board the Amazon for Bordeaux. Nothing particular was remarked about her during the trip, excepting that she told the fortunes of the passengers with a deck of cards—that she said she was certain she would die before long, and that she was in a great hurry to get back to France. This is all we know about her past.
"On the afternoon of April 3d she arrived at the Hotel of the Three Crowns, and at half-past five she killed her lover—a man whose past will not bear scrutiny, and who had been sentenced for theft on two occasions. You have heard the evidence of the servant with reference to the overexcitement of the prisoner. I will draw no conclusion from this evidence, nor is it necessary to go into the question of the prisoner's moral responsibility, which overexcitement—caused by drink—may have affected. I will leave this phase of the case to my friend, the counsel for the defense—Maître Raymond Floriot——"
A frightful, unearthly shriek drowned the soothing voice of the prosecutor and brought every man and woman in the courtroom, pale-faced and startled, to their feet. Several women screamed, and the others stared, frightened at the prisoner. She was standing, rigid and swaying, head raised and eyes closed, her stiffened arms held close to her sides, her hands opening and closing convulsively. Two gendarmes seized her and tried to force her back into her chair.
"My God! My God!" she shrieked again and again. Raymond was beside her in a moment, his hand on her arm, begging her to be calm.
"For God's sake! Stop torturing that woman!" roared a man's voice from the audience.
It was the signal for a pandemonium! The usher pounded on his desk until the boards cracked, but the crowd lurched forward against the railing in a terrific uproar.
"Let her alone!"
"She's dying!"
"Great God! It's Jacqueline! It's Floriot's wife!" shouted Noel in Dr. Chennel's ear. And the next moment that elderly physician was over the railing like a boy. He burst through the gendarmes and rushed over to the dock. But Jacqueline was again in her seat and waved him back. He and Raymond bent over her.
"Are you ill? Shall I ask for an adjournment?" they asked breathlessly.
"No! No! No!" she panted, "I'm all right—all right!"
Her eyes were still closed and her lips worked as if she were trying to speak. Dr. Chennel's fingers closed over her left wrist. He leaned over and whispered reassuring words in her ear and gently patted her shoulder. The subtle magnetism cf the physician seemed to have its effect at last and she slowly opened her eyes and sat up.
The din in the courtroom died as suddenly as it had begun, and the spectators shamefacedly sought their seats under the blazing eyes of the President.
He was livid with anger.
"This is the most disgraceful scene that ever stained a French court!" he cried in a voice that trembled with suppressed rage. "If there is another sound from the benches during these proceedings I will order the gendarmes to clear the hall!"
Noel glanced quickly at his friend in his seat behind the judges to see if he, too, had recognized "the woman, Laroque."
Floriot's face was buried in his hands. He pressed a handkerchief so tightly to his eyes that Noel fancied he could see the whiteness of the nails. Any great blow—mental or physical—is immediately followed by a practically complete cessation of all activity of the senses. The mind —if it works at all—revolves around singular and ridiculous trifles, utterly foreign to the disaster or its effect. It was this condition that the recognition of Jacqueline left her husband. He was conscious that quiet had been restored and that Valmorin was continuing his speech, but the scene and its actors seemed remote from his life.
"As for the reason of the crime," the prosecutor was saying, "I repeat that we do not know it. Now that the prisoner has promised to speak, we may learn what it was."
Speak!—would she speak!—Raymond was standing half facing the prosecutor, his profile toward the woman. His right hand rested on the top of the railing in front of the dock. Jacqueline's eyes were on his handsome head, and in them there was unutterable love and unutterable dread. His delicate nostrils were quivering, and a touch of color came and went in his cheeks. He was watching Valmorin with eager, anxious eyes. Timidly, as a child, her hand crept out and closed softly over his fingers. He glanced up at her quickly, with what was meant to be a reassuring smile, but the early stage fright was returning. The prosecutor was nearing the end of his speech and in a few moments he must rise to reply. She drew her hand away, and he looked from it to the woman for a moment as if something remarkable had happened.
... An invisible band that has never been measured by our mortal standards binds mother and child together. It, alone of earthly ties, takes no count of Time or Space, and joy and degradation and wealth and want and woe alike are powerless to loosen. It has been called the only unselfish love, but it is not that. For, "damned in body and soul," the boy clings to his mother as to a promise of salvation; and a mother, dying in shame and despair, yet sees in her child—Immortality!...
As if it had needed but that touch of the fingers to draw the cord tightly around his heart, Raymond felt for a moment that his soul was going out to the wretched woman that he had never seen until that day. Emotions that he had never known before were stirred to life. A desire to take her in his arms almost overpowered him. And what it meant to the mother only a mother may know. "Speak!" She would commit a thousand murders and go a thousand times to execution rather than utter a syllable now!...
"You, gentlemen of the jury, will weigh in the balance her sincerity and repentance with her guilt, and let your conscience be the judge of what punishment is proportionate to the crime she has committed."
There was a rustle and low murmur of whispered conversation as M. Valmorin resumed his seat.
"I don't think much of M. the Public Prosecutor," muttered M. Perissard. M. Merivel nodded his acquiescence without taking his eyes off the scene beyond the railing. The prisoner was huddled over the front of the dock, sobbing violently The President gazed at her with pity in his eyes.
"Woman Laroque, will you answer my questions now?" he asked, kindly. She did not seem to hear.
"You said a few minutes ago that you would speak."
Jacqueline raised her wet, anguish-stricken face and held out both hands, as if warding off a blow.
"No! Never! Never!" she cried, wildly, and sank down again.
"Take time for reflection, and let me, for the last time, advise you not to remain obstinate!" persisted the judge.
There was no reply save a storm of weeping that shook the dock. Murmurs of pity rose again and the usher rapped sharply on his desk for attention.
"Counsel for the defense!" called the President,
Raimond straightened up with an effort and turned to face the jury. His face was almost as white as the prisoner's. His lips trembled and his eyes burned. From the moment the woman had pressed his hand he had been struggling with an emotion more unnerving than stage fright. Hitherto he had known misery only as we who never stir from home know the suffering of an arctic explorer. For the first time in his life he had been thrown into actual contact with the raw reality, stripped of the veneer and varnish of the story-teller. When he looked at the crouching woman and felt the railing tremble with her sobs he dimly understood the despair that could welcome death as a friend. If he had only known—if he could only have felt this way when he had written his speech! What was his speech? How did it begin? His eye met his father's for a wavering instant and the frightened gaze and livid features of the stern magistrate completed the demoralization of his son. His father saw that he would fail and shame him, he thought! He dared not glance toward Helene. He must begin! He fixed his eyes on a light stain on the dark wood of the jury-box and tried to remember the opening words of his address. They would not come. The overwhelming sense of failure, the foreknowledge that he could not make the jury feel the flood of emotion that had paralyzed his tongue, brought team to his eyes!
The courtroom was preternaturally still. A juryman coughed, and at the sound Raymond felt an Overmastering impulse to scream or run out. There was a long-drawn sob behind him and he straightened up—rigid. He raised his eyes and the jury-box was a gray-black blur. His lips felt stiff and his tongue dry—but he must begin! He bowed stiffly and hurriedly to the bench and quickly drew the back of his hand across his eyes to clear away the mist of tears....
"Gentlemen—of the jury!" His voice sounded strange to his own ears, and he leaned with both hands on the table. What were his opening words?—It was useless! But he must stumble on some way!
"I cannot—I will not try—to conceal—the very great emotion that I feel! I hope—you must pardon me——" He met the eyes of one of the jurors, and instead of the contempt and amusement that he had expected he saw a gleam of sympathy. Oh, if he had only the power to play upon it! Why couldn't he remember his speech? He could only tell them how he felt, and plead for mercy for the woman.
"My wish is to be cool—and to keep calm—but my eyes fill with tears in spite of all—my efforts." And again he quickly dashed his hand across his eyes. He looked up at the men, who must judge him and his speech, with almost piteous bravery.
"My heart is beating—quicker than it should! My voice is trembling—and it is all that I can do to keep from breaking down and crying like a child instead of pleading for my client—here before you. I crave your indulgence for this weakness—but it does not make me blush!" He threw back his head, and at last he saw the jurors clearly before him.
"It is the first time in my life that I have come close to the bitterness of a woman's grief and misery and—my heart is tom by the fear that I shall not be able to prove myself equal to the noble task that I have undertaken!"
He paused and wet his dry lips with his tongue.
"I can find none of the arguments that I had prepared for the purpose of moving and convincing you, and my ready-made phrases have vanished from my brain, dispersed by one glance at the suffering and distress of this poor woman!
"Look at her, gentlemen! No words of mine can have the power of tears to move you to mercy!"
There was a falter and piteous break in his voice as he half turned and laid his hand on the dock. There was not another sound save the woman's sobs. The faces of the jurors told him that they were listening with eager attention and the fear of being made ridiculous began to pass. Blindly, Instinctively, he had stumbled on to the greatest rule of the greatest orator that ever lived: "Be earnest!"
In those few minutes the jurymen had felt the force of clean emotion, of noble purpose, behind the stumbling words, and they waited breathlessly. With the growing confidence some of the arguments that he had embodied in his written speech came back to him; but he could not remember the words.
"And there is a mystery—a veil of mystery which has not been torn by the evidence and still surrounds this woman for whom I am pleading," he went on. "Who is this weeping and despairing woman? Where does she come from, and why did she kill the man with whom she lived? We do not know!" His voice was gaining a strong, commanding ring.
"She alone can rend this veil that surrounds her life, and she refuses to do so! She alone knows the secret and keeps it! Why? So as to mislead the cause of justice? Certainly not! For if that were her object, she would speak. She would try to justify herself. She would lie, so as to appear innocent!
"She could find a dozen plausible reasons for the murder of her lover! A quarrel, a violence on his part, a momentary madness—nobody could give her the lie. Nobody saw or heard what happened immediately before the murder; and Laroque, the only person in the room besides the prisoner, is dead! But my client has disdained all subterfuge! She knew perfectly well what the consequence of her act would be—and—she—has not—tried—to—escape it!
"'There's no hurry,' she said to the boots of the hotel, who wrenched the revolver from her hand. 'I sha'n't try to getaway.' And since then she has been silent. Why? Her own words tell us why, gentlemen, and will lift a corner of the curtain which hides the truth from us!
"The policeman who arrested her has told us that he asked the prisoner why she killed Laroque, and that she answered: 'I killed him to prevent him from doing an infamous and shameful thing which would have brought misfortune on some one I love!'
"This, gentlemen," he cried, his voice rising, "tells us the secret of this poor creature!
"She killed this man Laroque, of whose past—as my friend the Public Prosecutor rightly said—no good was known. She killed this man who has, on two occasions, undergone punishment for theft and was capable of anything.She killed him, because taking his life was the only way she could prevent an infamy that would have brought shame land despair on some one she loved!
"Does this not explain the insistency of her silence? This woman, this poor wreck, who has been beaten down to the lowest rungs of the ladder of physical and moral misery, this wretched creature—loves! Good women will sweep their skirts from her touch in the streets, but love is in her heart, and the happiness of him or her whom she loves is dearer to her than her own life!
"One day she sees a menace to this happiness and kills—kills without hesitation the scoundrel who was about to destroy it!"
Gone was the stage fright—gone the fear of failure! As the ear of a musician tells him when his hands have found a chord, so is there a psychic ear which tells the orator that the spirit of his audience is in harmony with his words. As this telepathic message reached his brain, Raymond felt at last within him the power to move the hearts of men. Words poured forth in a rushing flood!
"Love was the motive that made her a criminal! Love, and love only! And whom does she love to the sacrifice of herself? Is it a father who is respected and honored by all in his old age? Is it a husband or lover to whom she has been false and whom she left long ago? Is it a child who knows nothing of his mother's shame and lives unconscious and happy?
"We do not know! But some such love is the secret of my client and the reason of her silence. She cares nothing for what men may say of her, nor for man's judgment of her! She does not care for her own life, and sacrifices it with gladness! But she will not let herself be known! There is only one single being of importance to her, and she will not let her name be spoken lest the sentence stain her picture in the heart of the one she worships!
"Gentlemen of the jury, a woman who can feel like this is no vulgar criminal! I feel sure that I shall prove to you that it is no mere criminal who stands before you! The police have moved heaven and earth to establish her identity, and they have failed. This is alone sufficient proof that this crime is her first; for had she been convicted before, the police would have found traces of her past!
"And there is no doubt, gentlemen"—his voice was vibrant and his eyes flashed through the tears—"there is no doubt that a man was originally responsible for my client's fall. When a woman falls and rolls in the gutter, it is not with her that we should feel indignant—it is not against her breast that we should cast the stones!
"A man has done this thing!" he shouted, his features quivering. "He has seduced or ill-treated her! He is a lover without scruple, or a husband with too little nobility of character and too much pride—a husband who has not known how to pity, and who sentenced her for a first fall to a life of sin!
"The laws of man are powerless against such a lover or such a husband," he cried, stepping forward with clenched fist above his head, "but God sees him—and God judges him!
"Such a man has made this woman what you see her to-day, and he alone is responsible!" He paused and gulped to swallow an imaginary something in his throat. Then he went on bitterly:
"He, no doubt, lives happily—his name respected and his conscience calm! But in the eyes of Eternal Justice this man stands by this woman's side, or lower still! And in the name of a higher law, in the name of your mothers and sisters, I call upon you to do justice—with pity—to this woman whose life has been the plaything of the man who should stand in her place!"
He paused again. His head felt hot and his; feet cold. He knew that he had not used a syllable of his original speech, but words and phrases that he had never dreamed of before leaped to his tongue in battalions. His voice, that had been hoarse and uncertain at the opening, was now true to every changing note of his heart. Without looking in their direction he was conscious that Helene and Rose were crying. From the audience he heard the strained coughing of "men and the muffled weeping of women. He glanced toward the bench and saw, with vague wonder, his father's bowed and shaking figure. His eloquence had even moved that iron judge, he thought! He could not know the agony of which he was the author! He could not dream that the generous wrath that flamed up from his pure heart had made his tongue a lash for his father's soul! Noel, watching and listening, his eyes shaded by his hand, felt the terrible torture of his friend, and twice he rose as if he would interrupt the boy's bitter arraignment of his father. But Raymond swept on with his speech.
"In the course of the eloquent address for the prosecution my friend reminded us that murder might sometimes be worthy of forgiveness, and that the wave of passion which causes murder sometimes excuses it.
"Gentlemen, I ask you on your consciences—is this woman guilty? Does she deserve punishment for wiping out of existence the pestilent criminal who was threatening the happiness of the one person she loved? Does this unfortunate woman deserve punishment for the silence she has kept heroically to save her name from scandal—and for whom? For the sake of another!
"No, gentlemen, a thousand times—No!Attire mere thought my heart cries out in protest! And you will, I know, gentlemen, share my emotion—and my conviction!
"Gentlemen of the jury, my cause is just, and the verdict will bear witness to its justice! I await it without fear! Were you to find my client guilty—even with extenuating circumstances—your verdict would only prove that I have not been equal to my task!
"And I should never cease to regret my lack of ability to make you feel those sentiments and convictions which bid me declare in a loud voice, with my hand upon my heart—this woman is not guilty!"
The speech was over. For a moment there was an awed hush. Then Raymond dropped heavily into his chair—exhausted and limp. His body lay half-way across the table, his face buried in his arms. He did not know until it was all over what the effort had cost in nervous force. A listless indifference and the feeling that he had failed came as a reaction to the exaltation of a moment before.
A quivering sigh swept through the room, followed by sounds of snuffling and the violent blowing of noses! And the spell was broken. The President drew a long breath and was turning to address the jury when there was an unexpected interruption. Victor Chouquet, who probably alone of those in the courtroom had been unmoved—for the reason that he couldn't understand—had had time to look around him with boorish curiosity. He had seen two men who, while they were dry-eyed, were listening with the appreciation of experts.
"Excuse me, M. the President!" he cried, in his high drawl. The President started.
"Who is speaking?"
"I, M. the President!" And Victor rose. The judge glanced at him impatiently.
"Have you anything else to say?"
"Yes, M. the President."
"Well? You may speak."
Victor did not lose any time. It had taken his dull mind some fifteen or twenty minutes to connect cause and effect, and he was ready. He turned and pointed along the front of the benches to the spot where the partners in confidential missions were seated.
"Those two over there came to the hotel and asked for M. Laroque before the boat came in," he said. "They came back and saw him after he arrived, and I took them up to his room. They went out with M. Laroque and stayed a long time. He came back about fifteen or twenty minutes before the murder was committed."
The judges and court officers gazed sharply at the two men, who were trying to conceal themselves behind the other spectators.
"This is important!" muttered the President "Have you anything else to say?"
"No, monsieur," replied Victor, resuming his seat.
"Usher, bring those two men to the bar!" commanded the President. "I have discretionary powers to question them as witnesses, although they have not previously been summoned—and I will use it."
The "confidential agents" looked nervously around the room as if seeking some way of escape as the usher advanced on them.
"For pity's sake, be careful!" whispered Perissard, anxiously. "Keep your mouth shut and leave it to me!"
"Don't worry! I won't say a word!" replied his colleague in the same tone.
"Gentlemen, if you please, this way!" cried the usher from the railing. As they came into the enclosure the President thought of something.
"Let one of them step forward and the other be taken to the waiting-room," he ordered. With another quick warning look at his confrère, M. Perissard walked up to the witness-stand while a gendarme escorted the other out behind the dock.
With one hand resting lightly on the railing in front of the witness-stand and the other nursing his immaculate silk hat, M. Perissard surveyed the judges and jury with an oily, benevolent smile.
"Your name and surname?" demanded the President.
"Perissard—Robert Henri!" replied the witness in his most unctuous tones, accompanying the answer with a half-bow.
"Your age?"
"Fifty-nine years, M. the President!"
"Your profession," continued the judge.
"Confidential missions," was the reply, with another bend.
"Your address?"
"No. 62 Rue Fribourg, Paris."
"Tell us what you know about the murder of Laroque!" the President commanded, and leaned back in his chair. M. Perissard's manner had not deceived him in the slightest measure. He knew the breed; and, knowing that the witness was a shrewd man, he tried to put him at a disadvantage by making him tell the story without questions.
But M. Perissard knew the danger of that system of examination as well as did the President.
"I know nothing about it at all, M. the President!" he declared earnestly. "I know absolutely nothing! And I cannot understand——"
"Did you know Laroque?" interrupted the judge, abruptly. M. Perissard shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.
"I used to know him years ago in Paris," he admitted, with a fine air of candor. "About six months ago I received a letter from him asking for work. I offered him a place in my office, and I went to see him when he arrived. That's all!"
Something familiar in the sound of his voice brought Floriot out of the stupor that succeeded the agony he had suffered. He raised his haggard face from his hands and met M. Perissard's eyes fixed upon him. He recognized him at once.
"Did you come from Paris to Bordeaux on purpose to see him?" pursued the examiner.
"No, M. the President, I had to come to Bordeaux to start a branch of my Paris house here."
"Is that the reason of your coming here to-day?"
M. Perissard paused and fixed his glance slowly and meaningly on the President of the Toulouse Court, over the judge's shoulder.
"No, M. the President," he said with deliberation. "I came to Bordeaux on a special matter of business, the business of one of my clients—a very delicate affair! It concerns the honor of a well-known family, and I hope to carry it through successfully. I am honorably known in my profession, and my clients know that they can always reckon—alwaysreckon, I repeat—on my entire discretion!"
"What did you say to Laroque in the course of your conversation with him?" continued the President.
"Nothing much, nothing much!" M. Perissard assured him, with an offhand gesture. "It was a business talk, in which I gave him a few general instructions about the work of my office. That is all!"
"You do not know anything about the shooting?"
"Not a thing, M. the President!" was the emphatic reply.
"Do you know the prisoner?"
M. Perissard turned and gave Jacqueline a long and careful scrutiny, as if he were not certain that he had ever seen her before.
"I saw her with Laroque," he said at last, "but I do not know who she is."
"You may——" began the President and stopped with a start. The prisoner was slowly rising. Her body was tense, and she leaned forward out of the dock with one rigid arm pointing at Perissard. With the black garb, livid face, and burning eyes and the clawlike hand pointing at the witness—whose fat pink cheeks had suddenly paled—she was like some uncanny sibyl about to launch a curse.
"ButIknowyou!" she cried in a hoarse voice that carried to the farthest corner. "You are the real cause of the murder!"
In a moment the audience was on its feet.
"I! I!" cried the blackmailer, stepping back with well-feigned astonishment while the usher hammered at his desk and shouted for order. But even the President was too much absorbed in the sudden dramatic development to heed the excitement in the court.
"Yes,you!" she repeated, stabbing at him with her stiff forefinger. "You found out that I was married and that I had left my husband, and you advised Laroque to find him and ask him for the money that I brought him on my marriage!"
M. Perissard had been in many a tight place—in many a situation where self-possession and nerve had saved him—and he quickly recovered from the shock of the denunciation. Ignoring the excitement that had upset the decorum of the court he turned to the President and said suavely:
"M. the President, Laroque told me during our conversation that his wife had had typhoid fever Hast year and that her brain had suffered."
But the woman was not to be silenced by such a trick.
"I nearly died last year, and my head was shaved," she said, slowly, turning and looking straight at Floriot, who was watching her with grief-stricken eyes. "That is why those who used to know me cannot recognize me now!"
Floriot hid his face in his hands and shuddered. Noel, white-faced, was gripping the railing in front of him with both hands.
"But I am not mad!" she cried, her voice rising to a shrill note as she faced Perissard once more. "I begged and prayed Laroque not to follow your hateful advice, and he refused to listen to me. As I would not run the risk of his seeing and speaking to my son,I killed him!"
Muttered imprecations and half-smothered exclamations of anger swept through the court, and the throng heaved forward against the railings. Raymond sprang up into the dock and with one arm around the woman's waist and the other resting on the arm nearest him, he gently forced her down into her chair once more. The usher pounded his desk and the gendarmes struggled to push the crowd back from the railing. It was several minutes before order was restored, but the President, hastily consulting his confrères on the bench, paid no heed.
"You may go!" he said, when the room had reached almost its normal semi-hush and the voices had dropped into excited whisperings. "Call the other witness!"
M. Perissard started hurriedly for the door, but at a signal from M. Valmorin the gendarmes stopped him.
"No, M. Perissard," said the prosecutor. "Do not leave the court, if you please. We may want you again."
"The presiding judge said I could go, and I have important business!" protested the blackmailer.
"And I ask you to stay!" repeated M. Valmorin, firmly. "Kindly sit down!"
He was escorted, muttering and grumbling, to the witnesses' bench.
"I really don't understand! It's disgraceful!" he fumed. "I was not regularly cited—Article 313 of the Code of Criminal Instruction. It's a shame!"
But no one paid any further attention to him, excepting a few jurors and the nearest of the spectators, who favored him with curious and unpleasant glances. The usher brought M. Merivel to the stand. He came with mincing steps, and many bows, and a confident smirk on his fat, heavy face.
The President eyed him with rather more dislike than he had shown for the other partner.
"Your name and surname!" he commanded, curtly.
"Merivel—Modiste Hyacinthe!" replied the junior partner, in his blandest professional tones.
"Your age?"
"Fifty-two years, M. the President!"
"Your profession?"
"Confidential missions!" replied M. Merivel, with an obsequious tow.
"Your address!" demanded the judge.
"No. 132 Rue St. Denis, Paris."
"What do you know about the murder of Laroque?"
M. Merivel threw open his hands and drew himself up.
"Nothing. M. the President!" he declared.
"Nothing?" questioned the judge with a frown.
"Nothing whatever!" M. Merivel assured him with much earnestness.
"Did you know Laroque?" was the next question.
"No, M. the President," was the prompt reply.
"Had you never seen him?"
"Never!" exclaimed the witness, without hesitation. Some one tittered and M. Perissard cursed his colleague heartily under his breath.
"You did not go to see him in his room at the Hotel of the Three Crowns on April 3d?"
"No, M. the President!" replied M. Merivel, with a solemn shake of the head. A ripple of laughter ran along the benches and M. Merivel began to perspire. His glance wavered before the President's stern eye.
"Be careful! The hotel people saw you!" he warned. M. Merivel glanced uneasily at his partner for a cue, but Perissard was afraid to give him a sign.
"They must have made a mistake, M. the President!" he said, at last, with a great assumption of firmness.
"Oh, what an ass!" growled his partner fiercely.
M. Valmorin rose suddenly.
"M. the President," he said, "the attitude of these two men is distinctly suspicious, and, by virtue of Article 330 of the Code of Criminal Instruction, I ask you to order their immediate arrest for perjury!"
M. Perissard bounded up with agility that fitted strangely with his corpulent figure.
"Look here!" he shouted angrily, "it isn't my fault if that fool——"
"Who are you calling a fool?" demanded his partner, advancing belligerently.
"Gendarmes, remove those two men!" commanded the President.
"I protest——" began M. Merivel, loudly, holding up his hand.
"You have no right to do this! It is perfectly——" stormed the other.
"Take them away!" interrupted the judge.
"I'll have my revenge!" foamed M. Merivel, in a voice that made the chairs tremble, as the gendarmes laid hold of him.
"Shut your mouth, you d——d idiot!" roared the other.
"I'll write to the papers! I'll——" And struggling, and threatening, cursing the court and each other, they were dragged off to be held on charges of perjury, while the crowd hissed them out. And this, it may be remarked here, ended their long careers of crookedness. Merivel was convicted of perjury, but the case against the senior partner could not be made to hold. Merivel was so enraged when the other was acquitted that he turned State's evidence and gave M. Valmorin the history of some of Perissard's "deals," with the result that both were sent to prison for long terms.
When the excitement attending the exit of the pair had subsided the President made one last appeal to the prisoner before giving the case to the jury.
"Woman Laroque," he said, gently, with a slight hesitation at the name, "have you anything to say in your defense? Tell the truth and the whole truth!"
To his astonishment, the woman slowly rose. A hush of eager expectancy fell over the room. Looking straight before her into the dead wall she began in a low, uncertain tone.
"My counsel has said all that could be said. I shall never forget his words, and I thank him from my heart!" The voice trembled and stopped.
"He was right!" she went on, unsteadily, her hands tightly clutching the desk as she struggled for control. "I was not naturally bad! A coward broke my life and made me what I have become!"
The President heard a muffled groan behind him where his guest was sitting, but he did not take; his eyes off the woman's face.
"I had wronged him, I admit, but I was sorry—and hated myself for my fault. I begged his pardon—begged for it on my knees! And he told me to go—threw me out into the streets! Me! His wife—the mother of his child!
"Thanks to him I rolled in the gutter! Thanks to him I have suffered a thousand deaths—and I have killed! I hate him! I hate him!" she cried wildly, her voice shaking with passion. "And with my last breath I will curse his name!"
She paused with a gasp and swallowed hard. Floriot sat with his face in his hands and his heaving shoulders told the story of his agony. Rose and Helene, their heads close together, were openly crying, and there were sounds of sobbing and snuffling from all over the room. The jury sat; like twelve men hypnotized. Raymond stood looking up into her face, while a hundred emotions swept him. The feeling of pity, the desire to comfort, that had moved him when she pressed his hand, returned with reawakened force. He could not know it—but she dared not glance down at him.
"And yet I do not complain," she went on, with a strange note of tenderness. "No, I do not complain! I have a son—a son whom I love, whom I love more than I can say!"
Once more she paused, and when she spoke again some of the excitement under which she had labored returned.
"But he does not know me!" she cried. "The sound of my voice—thank God!—can awaken no echo in his heart! He will never see me again—know nothing of my shame and," she faltered, "his memory of me will be vague and sweet and beautiful; for—when I became—lost to him—he was a child! He is so far—from me—now! But I love him! I worship him! All my heart is his. My one wish—is that he—should be happy—that—ah!"
The words ended in a long-drawn sob and she sank into her chair, huddled over the desk.
Eloquent and earnest as had been Raymond's impassioned outburst it hardly moved the throng as did the woman's short and broken confession. In the hearts of all men and women who are worthy of the name there is ever pity for a fallen woman; but in this case there was something more than that. Pity for the wrecks of vice is often tempered by the instinctive feeling that the lost are mercifully drugged by their own excesses until they are incapable of realizing fully that they have fallen beyond the reach of redemption.
But here there was none of that. In that prayer for her son, every mother in the room heard a mother crying out to her across an unbridgeable gulf—every man knew that the woman's soul was writhing under the torture of seeing herself as she was; and the soft weeping and the pressed lips and shining eyes were eloquent of their emotion.
Even the old President felt the spell, and it was with an effort that he took his eyes off the bowed figure with Raymond bending over it and turned to address the jury. At his first words—delivered tin a matter-of-fact "legal" tone—a rustle and stir ran over the benches. It was over.
"Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "you have to answer this question: Is the prisoner guilty of the murder committed on April 3d, on the body of her lover, Frederick Laroque? If the majority of you believe that the prisoner is guilty or not guilty, your verdict will be worded accordingly.
"If the majority of you believe, on the other hand, that there are extenuating circumstances, you are to give your verdict in these words:
"'The majority of the jurors believe that there are extenuating circumstances in favor of the prisoner.'
"I point out to you that your vote must be a secret one. Kindly withdraw to the jury-room. The court is rising!"
As he spoke he rose, accompanied by the ether' judges and moved toward the door of his private room, opening off the "bank." The usher pounded his desk.
"The court is rising!" he repeated in a loud tone. With the shuffling of many feet the throng rose and the hum of conversation filled the room. Escorted by two gendarmes, Jacqueline was taken out to the prisoner's room to await the verdict.
Floriot, walking like a drunken man, went out with M. Valmorin to the latter's little office. Noel tried to reach him, but he disappeared before he could cross the court. Dr. Chennel followed him and Raymond suddenly stopped them, returning from the door of the prisoner's room, where he had accompanied the woman.
The big hall was practically deserted. Helene had quickly recovered from her emotion in her pride in Raymond, but Rose wept inconsolably, and the girl led her out to the open air.
Raymond eagerly seized the hands of his father's friends.
"Do you think she will get off, doctor?" he asked, quickly.
"I hope so," responded the surgeon with an affectionate smile; "and if she does, she may I thank you, my boy!"
"Is that so?" he exclaimed, with a pleased little laugh and nervous toss of his head. "I thought I was awfully bad!"
"And I thought you were marvelous!" rejoined Noel, with unmistakable meaning. He was looking curiously at the young man's flushed and handsome face.
"Oh, come now!" protested Raymond.
"I mean it. You reached me—and not only me!" he added half to himself.
Raymond shook his hand with hearty gratitude.
"It's awfully good of you to tell me these things," he said, "and I'm mighty proud of one thing! Do you know that I made my father cry? I did, for a fact! 'The Man of Bronze,' some one told me they call him! I managed to glance at him a couple of times, and I'm sure he was crying!
"Now, that's a success, you know! For a young fellow like me to make the presiding judge of another criminal court cry over his first speech is pretty good, whether the young lawyer is the judge's son or not!
"My, but I was nervous! That poor woman completely upset me. You remember when she called out and nearly fainted?"
The others nodded.
"Yes," said Noel. "You turned around and looked up and spoke to her, I think."
"Exactly!" Raymond rattled on, excitedly. "I put my hand on the edge of the rail and she took hold of it, and pressed it, and—do you know, I forgot all about my speech, and everything else? It's a fact! She looked at me in the most extraordinary way!"
He paused a moment and then went on soberly, with a vague, puzzled look in his dark eyes.
"She drew me toward her, somehow. I don't know how to explain it to you. I wanted to take her in my arms and console her and kiss her—yes, kiss her! Kind of foolish, eh?" he added, with a quick smile. "Queer sort of a lawyer who'd want to kiss his clients, isn't it? But I swear that's what I did want! It was one of the most extraordinary sensations I have ever felt, and it upset me so that I caught myself talking for a full minute without knowing what I was saying. Luckily, I sort of got hold of myself, and—and—I'm almighty glad it's all over. Ah, here comes the President of the Toulouse court!"
His few minutes in M. Valmorin's office had partially restored Floriot's steel nerves. He took a drink of water and gently put aside the prosecutor's solicitous questions, and then he hurried out to find his son, knowing that the boy would feel hurt if he was not among the first to congratulate him. But his white, lined face and haggard eyes bore witness to the terrible suffering of the recent ordeal.
Raymond hastened forward a few steps to meet him.
"Thank you, my boy, thank you!" said Floriot unsteadily, as he gripped his son's hand. "It was a noble speech!"
Then he dropped wearily into a chair. Raymond stared at him, startled.
"Why, is anything the matter, father?" he cried, stepping quickly over to his side.
Floriot raised his hand as if to motion him away.
"No! Nothing, nothing!" he replied.
"I think Mademoiselle Valmorin wants to speak to you, Raymond," interrupted Noel, hurriedly. The young man threw a quick look up toward the benches and saw that Helene had returned and was trying to telegraph him with her eyes. A father's claims must always yield to a lover's, and with a lingering glance at the figure in the chair, Raymond hurried off to his sweetheart's, side.
Noel put his hand under Floriot's arm and drew him off to a corner by the bench, where they were partially hidden, while Dr. Chennel did sentry duty in the background.
"You recognized her, of course?" said Floriot, in a low broken voice, without meeting his friend's eye.
Noel nodded, but did not speak.
"There's no doubt about it!" went on his friend. "It is Jacqueline, and this is what she has become! This is my work! Jacqueline! Jacqueline!" he groaned, piteously.
"What are you going to do?" demanded Noel. The effort to control himself made his voice sound hard. Floriot shook his head miserably.
"I don't know!" he groaned. "What do you think?"
"It doesn't seem to me," retorted Noel, bitterly, "that this is exactly a time for thinking! If she should be convicted, maybe it would be better to let things take their natural course and never let Raymond know who she was. But if she is acquitted, you will have to tell him, and we will have to do what we can to—to—wipe out twenty years!"
Floriot's only reply for a moment was a dry sob. Then:
"How can I tell him—now! God!" he cried, "he will add his curses to hers! I will lose him! I——"
The sharp clang of a bell broke in. Noel started, it was the signal that the court was coming in.
"Already!" he exclaimed. "The jury didn't take long!" He hastily gripped his friend's hand as the door of the President's room opened, and pushed him toward his seat.
"Keep your heart, old man!" he added, kindly. "We'll come through all right!"
Raymond brushed against him as he walked back to his seat. His ears were singing with Helene's whispers.
"It's a good sign, isn't it?" he said in low, eager tones. Noel nodded and passed outside the railing. The crowd was swarming in from both doors, and by the time the judges had comfortably settled themselves the hall was packed once more. The jury filed slowly into the box and sat down. The usher rapped for silence. There was not a sound in the court when the President solemnly commanded:
"Gentlemen of the jury, give your verdict!"
The foreman, a round-faced, dry-goods salesman, plainly oppressed by the importance of his position, rose, and, with his right hand over his heart, declared, in husky tones:
"On my honor and on my conscience, before God and before men, the declaration of the jury is:
"No, the prisoner is not guilty!"
A gasp swept across the hall, and then the great throng burst into a cheer. Men sprang up and slapped each other on the back, and women, with tear-stained faces, frantically waved their limp handkerchiefs. Rose gave Helene a convulsive hug, and it was returned with interest. Sergeant Fontaine so far forgot his official reserve as to seize Victor's hand and shake it with enthusiasm, while he twisted his mustache violently with the other. Raymond was trying to combine the dignity of an advocate with an expression of rapturous delight. The usher hammered his desk and the gendarmes shouted for order. Only Floriot sat with bowed head, and Noel watched him under the hand that shaded his eyes. Evidently feeling that the shortest way was the quickest, the President ordered the usher to bring in the prisoner.
As soon as the door opened and the woman walked slowly in between the gendarmes, the din fell away to a tense hush. There was a spot of color in her cheeks that had not been there before, and her eyes were wilder. Dr. Chennel gazed at her with close scrutiny.
"She has a very high fever!" he whispered to Noel. The latter nodded, without turning his head.
"Clerk of the court, read the declaration of the jury!" commanded the President. The clerk, who had been busily writing out that document in the form prescribed, rose with the paper in his hand and read, in a droning monotone:
"The declaration of the jury is: No, the prisoner is not guilty. In consequence whereof the court proclaims the prisoner's innocence of the crime of which she is accused, orders her acquittal, and orders that she be immediately set at liberty, unless there be other reason for her detention. The court is risen!"
The last words were lost in a frightful shriek from the prisoner.
"No! No! No!" she screamed, struggling in the grip of the two guards as she tried to throw herself out of the dock. "Let me die! I want to, die! I want to die!"
In an instant the court was again in an uproar with oaths, cries of anger, and shrieks of women. The crowd swept forward to the railing.
"Clear the court!" roared the President; and the gendarmes threw themselves into the press, driving the packed men and women toward the exits. The din was terrific, and above it all rose Jacqueline's screams.
"I want to die! I want to die!"
Raymond was the first to reach her, closely fol lowed by Dr. Chennel and Noel, and then Floriot "For God's sake!doctor! Help her!" he cried.
As the rear of the hysterical mob was driven from the hall and the doors locked, Jacqueline collapsed into her chair, unconscious. At the same moment the President hurried up, pulling on his street coat.
"Carry her into my room!" he commanded. The two muscular gendarmes picked her up, chair and all, and carried her into the little dressing-room. Then, with a sign, he dismissed them and immediately followed himself, leaving the little party alone.
Leaving Helene in her father's care, Rose followed the solemn little procession into the President's room. Dr. Chennel met her at the door and gave her a few hasty orders as to medicine, and she hurried away. Then he turned to the patient.
In a moment he had Noel administering smelling salts and Raymond moistening her temples with cologne, which he produced from his emergency tag. Floriot, with white, compressed lips and frightened eyes, stood watching as the doctor felt her pulse, listened with ear to her heart, and turned back the lids of the sightless eyes.
Floriot was the first to speak.
"Is she—in danger?" he whispered, brokenly. The doctor slowly shook his head.
"I can't tell yet," he replied, without taking his eyes off her face. "Her heart is undoubtedly badly affected. It is worn out—like the rest of her. My great fear is that she may die of utter exhaustion."
Floriot turned away with an inarticulate groan.
"Doctor! I think she moved just now!" exclaimed Noel. The doctor was watching her face keenly.
"Yes, she's coming around all right," he nodded. "This crisis is over, but——" He shrugged his shoulders.
The dark eyelids trembled and slowly opened. There was a long, fluttering sigh. Dr. Chennel bent over.
"How do you feel now?" he asked. She swallowed slowly once or twice, and looked listlessly at the circle of faces around her. Floriot was standing where he could not be seen.
"Not well," she murmured, feebly. "I'm all broken up. I—don't—seem to have—any strength. Where am I?"
"In the law courts—in the President's room," replied Chennel. She started, as if to rise.
"The President's!" she gasped. Her brain was still hazy, but she could think of only one President. Noel seemed to divine something of what was in her mind, for he threw Floriot in the background a look that said: "Leave this to me!" Floriot opened the door and stumbled out. At an imperative gesture from Noel, Raymond followed him.
When the door had closed behind them, Noel bent over until his lips all but touched the woman's ear.
"Jacqueline!" he murmured. She looked up at him with dull eyes.
"Who are you?" she asked, indifferently. "You seem to know my name—who are you?"
He looked steadily and tenderly into her eyes.
"Don't you remember me?"
She shook her head.
"But I'm sure you haven't altogether forgotten me!" he insisted, gently. She studied his face for several moments and then recognition slowly dawned in her eyes.
"Wait a minute! But—no, it's impossible! It can't be!" she cried, excitedly. Dr. Chennel tactfully stepped back to the opposite side of the little room.
"Little Jenny Wren!" whispered Noel.
"Noel! Noel! You!" she cried, clutching his arm and looking hungrily up into his face.
"Yes, it's Noel!" he smiled. She seized his hand and pressed it again and again to her cheek.
"Oh, thank God! Thank God!" she sobbed. "I'm no longer alone! Noel! Noel! Noel!"
"Are you really as glad as all that to see me again, Jennie Wren?" he whispered, tenderly. He sat on the arm of the chair and she clung to him as if she were afraid he might disappear as suddenly as he had come.
"Noel! Noel! Pity me! Pity me!" she sobbed.
He gently laid his fingers across her lips.
"Don't talk of pity!" he whispered. "Everything is forgotten!"
"Ah! As if I could ever forget!" she moaned.
"Of course, you can!" he cried, cuddling her up close to him. "It was all a nightmare, and you're awake now. Don't cry, Jacqueline, don't cry! We're all together again, and we'll all be happy together and your son——"
Jacqueline tore herself away from him with a frightened cry and tried to rise.
"Raymond!" she gasped. "Has any one told him? Does he know?"
"No! No! He doesn't know anything yet!" Noel assured her hastily. But the dread of meeting her son and having him know her was too strong. She still struggled to rise, but was too weak.
"Is he here?" she panted. "He mustn't see me! Oh, let me go away! Let me go away!"
She got half-way out of her chair, but fell back exhausted. Dr. Chennel stepped forward and laid a hand on her arm.
"You will be able to go presently, madame," he said, quietly. "Your strength will come back to you shortly."
Jacqueline glanced at him eagerly.
"You are a doctor, aren't you?" she panted.
"Yes," he replied, with a nod. "Don't excite yourself and I'll cure you in a few minutes, for can have perfect confidence in me. I am a friend of your son—a friend of Raymond!"
"Oh! Then—you know——"
"Yes, I know everything," he interrupted, gravely.
"But he will never know, doctor, will he?" she asked, feverishly, gripping his hand.
"No, he shall know nothing at all," he assured.
"Promise me! Promise me!" she cried.
"I promise!" he repeated. She released his hand and sank back with a piteous sob.
"I have nothing left—to me now—but my memories of him," she wept, "and his thoughts of what he believes me to have been. I want him to love me always! Always!—Ah—h—h!"
She closed her eyes and hid her face as the door opened; but it was only Rose with the medicine, on a little tray with a tumbler of water and a teaspoon.
"Quick, Rose, here!" ordered the doctor, sharply. He quickly mixed some of the stimulant with the water and held the tumbler to her lips. She drank a little and presently revived.
"Doctor," she said, faintly. "I believe I'm going to die!"
"Nonsense! Don't be foolish!" laughed the doctor. Rose broke into sobs and Jacqueline recognized her, and the next moment mistress and maid were in each other's arms. They kissed and wept over each other for a minute or two and then Noel cried lightly:
"There you are! Now let's not have any more nonsense about dying!" While Noel kept up a running fire of pleasant chat in an effort to revive Jacqueline's spirits, Dr. Chennel drew Rose off to one side of the room.
"Where is M. Floriot?" he asked, in a low undertone.
"Just outside—with M. Raymond," replied Rose.
"Tell him not to go away!"
Rose looked up at him quickly and her cheeks paled.
"Do you—think that——" she stopped short.
The expression of his eyes gave her the answer.
"Hush!" he whispered. "It is only a question of time—and a short time!"
Rose slipped out and he returned to his patient in time to hear Noel reorganizing her wardrobe, with much laughter, and making plans for a trip to the country. She was smiling faintly, but the smile faded when he made her take some more of the bitter medicine.
"Tastes rather horrible, eh?" he said with a smile, "but you feel better, don't you?"
"Yes, thank you," answered Jacqueline, weakly. "I don't suffer at all. It's my strength—I feel so—weak!"
"Your strength will come back fast enough!" he assured her heartily. "I'll tell you what we'll do! I shall take you to my house in Biarritz! There I can look after you comfortably and easily, and you'll be around in no time!"
"Oh, doctor!" she cried, a grateful catch in her voice. "You are too kind! But it's impossible. I should be in the way."
"Not the least bit in the world!" he replied briskly. "The house is a big comfortable sort of a barn. I live there all alone, excepting an elderly sister, and she will be only too happy to have you. You'll be with friends there; for, although you don't know it, my sister and I have been your friends for a long time."
"My friends?" she repeated, with a little questioning smile.
"He saved Raymond's life, you know," explained Noel, quickly. The expression of Jacqueline's face altered in a moment to one of unutterable gratitude. She seized his hand and kissed it passionately.
"Doctor, I—I—cannot thank you!" she murmured brokenly.
The doctor gently disengaged his hand and stepped back, turning his face away. The pity of the scene had all but overcome the well-schooled emotions of the man of medicine.
"He and his sister did all they could to console Floriot," whispered Noel; "the poor chap was broken-hearted."
Noel felt the limp figure stiffen at the mention of the hated name.
"Not as broken-hearted as I was!" she exclaimed, bitterly.
"How do you know, Jacqueline? 'Judge not, lest ye be judged,'" he quoted softly.
"I have been judged!" she replied in the same hard undertone. "He drove me out of his house like a dog!"
Noel was silent for a moment; and when he spoke his voice was vibrant with the emotion that the memory of that terrible night awoke.
"I was there that day, Jacqueline, after you had gone," he said. "I saw his grief—and his repentance. I heard him curse his anger and his pride. And since then he—we have searched the world for you. For twenty years he has not had a thought that was not of you, and in those twenty years he has never known peace or happiness. Ah! Jacqueline, dearest, I believe he has suffered even more than you have!"
"He had his son and I had nobody!" was the bitter reply.
And as if her words had been a call to him, the door was thrown violently open and Raymond dashed headlong into the room.
When Floriot and Raymond passed out of the little room, the former dropped heavily into one of the big empty armchairs on the bank where the judges had sat a short time before. Raymond gazed at him anxiously. His face was buried in his hands and he made no sound.
"What's the matter, father?" asked the young man, laying his hand on the quivering shoulder. But still his father did not speak. He was trying to nerve himself up to meet the hour that he had dreaded for years. The time for delay was past. He believed that Jacqueline would live only a few hours and he dared not let Raymond's mother die and have him learn afterward that he had been! robbed of his one chance to speak to her and know. He felt that Raymond might possibly forgive anything but that.
With an effort he raised his haggard eyes to his son's and took the boy's hand in his.
"My boy," he said, his voice hoarse and trembling with emotion, "I must tell you something unbelievably terrible. I know—how you have loved me and looked up to me—as the sort of man you want to be. When you've heard—what I must tell you now—you will curse God for making me your father!"
"Father!" cried the boy in horror, throwing his arm around his neck. "Father! What——"
But Floriot gently pushed him away and silenced him with a gesture.
"Your mother—is not dead!" he faltered. The words struck the color from Raymond's face and he almost staggered back and stared at his father with terrified eyes.
"Not dead!" he repeated in a dull whisper. Floriot shook his head.
"When you were hardly a year old she left—me!" he said. The boy started forward with a cry that was something between a choke and a sob.
"Wait!" commanded his father, hoarsely. "It was my fault! I didn't know her—I didn't understand her! My neglect drove her to it. She went off with a lover!"
Raymond pressed his hands to his face and crouched against the broad desk as if the blow had physically crushed him.