Alas, that it should be so hard a one! Alas,
that instead of encouraging him, she must point out the one weakness
of his cause which he did not or would not see, that is, his own
conviction of his absent son's guilt as typified by the line he
had deliberately smeared across Oliver's pictured countenance.
The task seemed so difficult, the first steps so blind, that she
did not know how to begin and stood staring at him with interest
and dread struggling for mastery in her heavily labouring breast.
Did he perceive this or was it the silence which drew his attention
to her condition and the evils still threatening him? Whichever it
was, the light vanished from his face as he surveyed her and it
was with a return of his old manner, that he finally observed:
"You are keeping something from me--some fancied discovery--some
clew, as they call it, to what you may consider my dear boy's guilt."
With a deep breath she woke from her trance of indecision and
letting forth the full passion of her nature, she cried out in
her anguish:
"I have but one answer for that, Judge Ostran-der. Look into
your own heart! Question your own conscience. I have seen what
reveals it. I--"
She stopped appalled. Rage, such as she had never even divined
spoke from every feature. He was no longer the wretched but calmly
reasoning man, but a creature hardly human, and when he spoke, it
was in a frenzy which swept everything before it.
"You have SEEN!" he shouted.
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