Hand and Ring

The lawyer listened with a strange apathy. What would once have aroused his fiercest indignation and fired him to an exertion of his keenest powers, fell on him now like the tedious repetition of an old and worn-out tale. He scarcely looked up when she was done; and despair – the first, perhaps, she had ever really felt – began to close in around her as she saw how deep a gulf she had dug between this man and herself by the inconsiderate act which had robbed him of all hope of ever making her his wife. Moved by this feeling, she suddenly asked:

"Have you lost all interest in your client, Mr. Orcutt? Have you no wish or hope remaining of seeing him acquitted of this crime?"

"My client," responded the lawyer, with bitter emphasis, "has taken his case into his own hands. It would be presumptuous in me to attempt any thing further in his favor."

"Mr. Orcutt!"

"Ah!" he scornfully laughed, with a quick yielding to his passion as startling as it was unexpected, "you thought you could play with me as you would; use my skill and ignore the love that prompted it. You are a clever woman, Imogene, but you went too far when you considered my forbearance unlimited."

"And you forsake Craik Mansell, in the hour of his extremity?"

"Craik Mansell has forsaken me."

This was true; for her sake her lover had thrown his defence to the winds and rendered the assistance of his counsel unavailable. Seeing her droop her head abashed, Mr. Orcutt dryly proceeded.

"I do not know what may take place in court to-morrow," said he. "It is difficult to determine what will be the outcome of so complicated a case. The District Attorney, in consideration of the deception which has been practised upon you, may refuse to prosecute any further; or, if the case goes on and the jury is called upon for a verdict, they may or may not be moved by its peculiar aspects to acquit a man of such generous dispositions. If they are, I shall do nothing to hinder an acquittal; but ask for no more active measures on my part. I cannot plead for the lover of the woman who has disgraced me."

This decision, from one she had trusted so implicitly, seemed to crush her.

"Ah," she murmured, "if you did not believe him guilty you would not leave him thus to his fate."

He gave her a short, side-long glance, half-mocking, half-pitiful.

"If," she pursued, "you had felt even a passing gleam of doubt, such as came to me when I discovered that he had never really admitted his guilt, you would let no mere mistake on the part of a woman turn you from your duty as counsellor for a man on trial for his life."

His glance lost its pity and became wholly mocking.

"And do you cherish but passing gleams?" he sarcastically asked.

She started back.

"I laugh at the inconsistency of women," he cried. "You have sacrificed every thing, even risked your life for a man you really believe guilty of crime; yet if another man similarly stained asked you for your compassion only, you would fly from him as from a pestilence."

But no words he could utter of this sort were able to raise any emotion in her now.

"Mr. Orcutt," she demanded, "do you believe Craik Mansell innocent?"

His old mocking smile came back.

"Have I conducted his case as if I believed him guilty?" he asked.

"No, no; but you are his lawyer; you are bound not to let your real thoughts appear. But in your secret heart you did not, could not, believe he was free from a crime to which he is linked by so many criminating circumstances?"

But his strange smile remaining unchanged, she seemed to waken to a sudden doubt, and leaping impetuously to his side, laid her hand on his arm and exclaimed:

"Oh, sir, if you have ever cherished one hope of his innocence, no matter how faint or small, tell me of it, even if this last disclosure has convinced you of its folly!"

Giving her an icy look, he drew his arm slowly from her grasp and replied:

"Mr. Mansell has never been considered guilty by me."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Not even now?"

"Not even now."

It seemed as if she could not believe his words.

"And yet you know all there is against him; all that I do now!"

"I know he visited his aunt's house at or after the time she was murdered, but that is no proof he killed her, Miss Dare."

"No," she admitted with slow conviction, "no. But why did he fly in that wild way when he left it? Why did he go straight to Buffalo and not wait to give me the interview he promised?"

"Shall I tell you?" Mr. Orcutt inquired, with a dangerous sneer on his lips. "Do you wish to know why this man – the man you have so loved – the man for whom you would die this moment, has conducted himself with such marked discretion?"

"Yes," came like a breath from between Imogene's parted lips.

"Well," said the lawyer, dropping his words with cruel clearness, "Mr. Mansell has a great faith in women. He has such faith in you, Imogene Dare, he thinks you are all you declare yourself to be; that in the hour you stood up before the court and called yourself a murderer, you spoke but the truth; that – " He stopped; even his scornful aplomb would not allow him to go on in the face of the look she wore.

"Say – say those words again!" she gasped. "Let me hear them once more. He thinks what?"

"That you are what you proclaimed yourself to be this day, the actual assailant and murderer of Mrs. Clemmens. He has thought so all along, Miss Dare, why, I do not know. Whether he saw any thing or heard any thing in that house from which you saw him fly so abruptly, or whether he relied solely upon the testimony of the ring, which you must remember he never acknowledged having received back from you, I only know that from the minute he heard of his aunt's death, his suspicions flew to you, and that, in despite of such suggestions as I felt it judicious to make, they have never suffered shock or been turned from their course from that day to this. Such honor," concluded Mr. Orcutt, with dry sarcasm, "does the man you love show to the woman who has sacrificed for his sake all that the world holds dear."

"I – I cannot believe it. You are mocking me," came inarticulately from her lips, while she drew back, step by step, till half the room lay between them.

"Mocking you? Miss Dare, he has shown his feelings so palpably, I have often trembled lest the whole court should see and understand them."

"You have trembled" – she could scarcely speak, the rush of her emotion was so great – "you have trembled lest the whole court should see he suspected me of this crime?"

"Yes."

"Then," she cried, "you must have been convinced, – Ah!" she hurriedly interposed, with a sudden look of distrust, "you are not amusing yourself with me, are you, Mr. Orcutt? So many traps have been laid for me from time to time, I dare not trust the truth of my best friend. Swear you believe Craik Mansell to have thought this of me! Swear you have seen this dark thing lying in his soul, or I – "

"What?"

"Will confront him myself with the question, if I have to tear down the walls of the prison to reach him. His mind I must and will know."

"Very well, then, you do. I have told you," declared Mr. Orcutt. "Swearing would not make it any more true."

Lifting her face to heaven, she suddenly fell on her knees.

"O God!" she murmured, "help me to bear this great joy!"

"Joy!"