"For me to acknowledge the
inevitable where my daughter's life and happiness are concerned
would make me seem a coward in my own eyes. Helped or unhelped,
with the sympathy or without the sympathy of one who I hoped would
show himself my friend, I shall proceed with the task to which I
have dedicated myself. You will forgive me, judge. You see that
John's last declaration of innocence goes farther with me than
your belief, backed as it is by the full weight of the law."
Gazing at her as at one gone suddenly demented, he said:
"I fail to understand you, Mrs.--I will call you Mrs. Averill. You
speak of a task. What task?"
"The only one I have heart for: the proving that Reuther is not
the child of a wilful murderer; that another man did the deed for
which he suffered. I can do it. I feel confident that I can do it;
and if you will not help me--"
"Help you! After what I have said and reiterated that he is
guilty, GUILTY, GUILTY?"
Advancing upon her with each repetition of the word, he towered
before her, an imposing, almost formidable figure. Where was her
courage now? In what pit of despair had it finally gone down? She
eyed him fascinated, feeling her inconsequence and all the madness
of her romantic, ill-digested effort, when from somewhere in the
maze of confused memories there came to her a cry, not of the
disappointed heart but of a daughter's shame, and she saw again
the desperate, haunted look with which the stricken child had said
in answer to some plea, "A criminal's daughter has no place in
this world but with the suffering and the lost"; and nerved anew,
she faced again his anger which might well be righteous, and with
almost preternatural insight, boldly declared:
"You are too vehement to quite convince me, Judge Ostrander.
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