Part 66 (1/2)

A bright flush leaped to his cheeks and burned there hotly.

”Yes, it was about you, sis. But you will soon be as well and happy as ever, won't you?” anxiously.

”To be sure, Evan; we will both get well very fast. We have got so much to live for, and we are too young to die.”

CHAPTER XLI.

SIR CLIFFORD HEATHERCLIFFE.

It is the opening hour of Clifford Heath's trial.

The court room is crowded to its utmost capacity; never has there occurred a trial there so intensely interesting to all W----.

The prisoner is a little paler, a little graver than his ordinary self.

But is his ordinary self in every other respect; as proud of bearing, as self-possessed, as handsome, and _distingue_ as ever.

Beside him sits Mr. O'Meara, alone. Mr. Wedron, after all his labor, and his seeming interest, is unaccountably absent; unaccountably, at least, so far as the opposition, the prisoner, the judge, jury, and all the spectators are concerned. Mr. O'Meara seems not at all disturbed by his absence, and evidently understands all about it.

Near the prisoner sits a man who causes a buzz of inquiry to run through the entire audience.

He is tall, fair haired, handsome; the carriage of his head, the haughtiness of his bearing, reminds more than one present of Clifford Heath, as they first knew him. He is a stranger to all W----, and ”Who is he? Who is he?” runs from lip to lip.

The stranger is seemingly oblivious of the attention lavished upon him; he bends forward at times, and whispers a word to the prisoner, or his counsel, and he turns occasionally to murmur something in the ear of Constance Wardour, who sits beside him, grave, stately, calm.

She is accompanied by Mrs. Aliston and Mrs. O'Meara, and Ray Vandyck sits beside the latter lady, and completes the party.

Mr. Lamotte is there, subdued, yet affable, and Frank, too, who is paler than usual, but quite self-possessed.

Near the party above mentioned, may be seen the two city physicians, but, and here is another cause for wonderment, Doctor Benoit is not present; and, who ever knew the good doctor to miss an occasion like this?

”Business must be urgent, when it keeps Benoit away from such a trial,”

whispers one gossip to another, and the second endorses the opinion of the first.

Sitting there, scanning that audience with a seemingly careless glance, Constance feels her heart sink like lead in her bosom.

She feels, she knows, that already in the minds of most, her lover is a condemned man. She knows that the weight of evidence will be against him. They have a defense, it is true, but nothing will overthrow the fact that John Burrill went straight to the house of the prisoner, and was found dead hard by.

All along she has hoped, she knew not what, from Bathurst. But since he returned Sybil's note in so strange and abrupt a manner, she has had no word or sign from him, and now she doubts him, she distrusts everything.

But, little by little, day by day, she has been schooling her heart to face one last desperate alternative. Her lover _shall_ be saved! Let the trial go on. Let the worst come. Let the fatal verdict be p.r.o.nounced, if it must; after that, perish the Wardour honor. What if she must trample the heart out of a mother's breast? What if she must fling into the breach the life of a blighted, wronged, helpless, perhaps dying sister woman?

Hardening her heart, crus.h.i.+ng down her pride, she muttered desperately on this last day of doubt and suspense.

”Let them all go. Let the verdict be what it may, Clifford Heath shall not suffer a felon's doom!”

Then she had nerved herself to calmness and gone to face the inevitable.

”Prisoner at the bar, are you guilty or not guilty?”