Some fled the house; others stopped to peer in again from behind
the folds of the curtain which had been only partially torn from
its fastenings. Miss Weeks was the only one to stand her ground.
When the room was quite cleared and the noise abated (it was a
frightful experience to see how little the judge had been affected
by all this hubbub of combined movement and sound), she stepped
within the line of his vision and lifted her feeble and
ineffectual hand in an effort to attract his attention to herself.
But he did not notice her, any more than he had noticed the
others. Still looking in the one direction, he cried aloud in
troubled tones:
"She stood there! the woman stood there and I saw her! Where is
she now?"
"She is no longer in the house," came in gentle reply from the
only one in or out of the room courageous enough to speak. "She
went out when she saw us coming. We knew that she had no right to
be here. That is why we intruded ourselves, sir. We did not like
the looks of her, and so followed her in to prevent mischief."
"Ah!"
The expletive fell unconsciously. He seemed to be trying to adjust
himself to some mental experience he could neither share with
others nor explain to himself.
"She was here, then?--a woman with a little child? It wasn't an
illusion, a--." Memory was coming back and with it a realisation
of his position. Stopping short, he gazed down from his great
height upon the trembling little body of whose identity he had but
a vague idea, and thundered out in great indignation:
"How dared you! How dared she!" Then as his mind regained its full
poise, "And how, even if you had the temerity to venture an
entrance here, did you manage to pass my gates? They are never
open.
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