Hand and Ring - Anna Katharine Green (love story books to read TXT) 📗

thus unconsciously, perhaps, slipped from her, "you acknowledge you uttered a perjury to save yourself from making declarations you believed to be hurtful to the prisoner?"

A faint smile crossed her lips, and her whole aspect suddenly changed.

"Yes," she said; "I have no motive for hiding it from you now. I perjured myself to escape destroying Craik Mansell. I was scarcely the mistress of my own actions. I had suffered so much I was ready to do any thing to save the man I had so relentlessly pushed to his doom. I forgot that God does not prosper a lie."

The jealous gleam which answered her from the lawyer's eyes was a revelation.

"You regret, then," he said, "that you tossed my happiness away with a breath of your perjured lips?"

"I regret I did not tell the truth and trust God."

At this answer, uttered with the simplicity of a penitent spirit, Mr. Orcutt unconsciously drew back.

"And, may I ask, what has caused this sudden regret?" he inquired, in a tone not far removed from mockery; "the generous action of the prisoner in relieving you from your self-imposed burden of guilt by an acknowledgment that struck at the foundation of the defence I had so carefully prepared?"

"No," was her short reply; "that could but afford me joy. Of whatever sin he may be guilty, he is at least free from the reproach of accepting deliverance at the expense of a woman. I am sorry I said what I did to-day, because a revelation has since been made to me, which proves I could never have sustained myself in the position I took, and that it was mere suicidal folly in me to attempt to save Craik Mansell by such means."

"A revelation?"

"Yes." And, forgetting all else in the purpose which had actuated her in seeking this interview, Imogene drew nearer to the lawyer and earnestly said: "There have been some persons—I have perceived it—who have wondered at my deep conviction of Craik Mansell's guilt. But the reasons I had justified it. They were great, greater than any one knew, greater even than you knew. His mother—were she living—must have thought as I did, had she been placed beside me and seen what I have seen, and heard what I have heard from the time of Mrs. Clemmens' death. Not only were all the facts brought against him in the trial known to me, but I saw him—saw him with my own eyes, running from Mrs. Clemmens' dining-room door at the very time we suppose the murder to have been committed; that is, at five minutes before noon on the fatal day."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Mr. Orcutt, in his astonishment. "You are playing with my credulity, Imogene."

But she went on, letting her voice fall in awe of the lawyer's startled look.

"No," she persisted; "I was in Professor Darling's observatory. I was looking through a telescope, which had been pointed toward the town. Mrs. Clemmens was much in my mind at the time, and I took the notion to glance at her house, when I saw what I have described to you. I could not help remembering the time," she added, "for I had looked at the clock but a moment before."

"And it was five minutes before noon?" broke again from the lawyer's lips, in what was almost an awe-struck tone.

Troubled at an astonishment which seemed to partake of the nature of alarm, she silently bowed her head.

"And you were looking at him—actually looking at him—that very moment through a telescope perched a mile or so away?"

"Yes," she bowed again.

Turning his face aside, Mr. Orcutt walked to the hearth and began kicking the burnt-out logs with his restless foot. As he did so, Imogene heard him mutter between his set teeth:

"It is almost enough to make one believe in a God!"

Struck, horrified, she glided anxiously to his side.

"Do not you believe in a God?" she asked.

He was silent.

Amazed, almost frightened, for she had never heard him breathe a word of scepticism before,—though, to be sure, he had never mentioned the name of the Deity in her presence,—she stood looking at him like one who had received a blow; then she said:

"I believe in God. It is my punishment that I do. It is He who wills blood for blood; who dooms the guilty to a merited death. Oh, if He only would accept the sacrifice I so willingly offer!—take the life I so little value, and give me in return——"

"Mansell's?" completed the lawyer, turning upon her in a burst of fury he no longer had power to suppress. "Is that your cry—always and forever your cry? You drive me too far, Imogene. This mad and senseless passion for a man who no longer loves you——"

"Spare me!" rose from her trembling lips. "Let me forget that."

But the great lawyer only laughed.

"You make it worth my while to save you the bitterness of such a remembrance," he cried. Then, as she remained silent, he changed his tone to one of careless inquiry, and asked:

"Was it to tell this story of the prisoner having fled from his aunt's house that you came here to-night?"

Recalled to the purpose of the hour, she answered, hurriedly:

"Not entirely; that story was what Mr. Ferris expected me to testify to in court this morning. You see for yourself in what a position it would have put the prisoner."

"And the revelation you have received?" the lawyer coldly urged.

"Was of a deception that has been practised upon me—a base deception by which I was led to think long ago that Craik Mansell had admitted his guilt and only trusted to the excellence of his defence to escape punishment."

"I do not understand," said Mr. Orcutt. "Who could have practised such deception upon you?"

"The detectives," she murmured; "that rough, heartless fellow they call Hickory." And, in a burst of indignation, she told how she had been practised upon, and what the results had been upon her belief, if not upon the testimony which grew out of that belief.

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