I--What's that?"
The front door-bell was ringing.
In a flash Deborah was out of the room. It was as if she had flown
with unnecessary eagerness to answer a bidding which, after all,
Reuther could easily have attended to. It struck him aghast for
the instant, then he began slowly to gather up the papers before
him and carry them back into the other room. Had he, instead, made
straight for the doorway leading to the front of the house, he
would have come upon the figure of Deborah standing alone and with
her face pressed in anguish and unspeakable despair against the
lintel. Something had struck her heart and darkened her soul since
that exalted moment in which she cried:
"Henceforth I will be Oliver's advocate."
When the judge at last came forth, it was at Reuther's bidding.
A gentleman wished to see him in the parlour.
This was so unprecedented,--even of late when the ladies did
receive some callers, that he stopped short after his first
instinctive step, to ask her if the gentleman had given his name.
She said no; but added that he was not alone; that he had a very
strange and not very nice-looking person with him whom mother
insisted should remain in the hall. "Mother requests you to see
the gentleman, Judge Ostrander. She said you would wish to, if you
once saw the person accompanying him."
With a dark glance, not directed against her, however, the judge
bade her run away to the kitchen and as far from all these
troubles as she could, then, locking his door behind him, as he
always did, he strode towards the front.
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