“With your Honor’s permission, I should like to ask the prisoner whom she expected to see, when she recognized the voice?”

“A person who is very dear to me, but who is not in the United States.”

“What is the name of that person?”

Her lips moved to pronounce his name, but some swift intuitive warning restrained the utterance.  Suddenly a new horror, a ghastly possibility, thrust itself for the first time before her, and she felt as though some hand of ice clutched her heart.

Those who watched her so closely, saw the blood ebb from cheeks and lips; noted the ashy pallor that succeeded, and the strange groping motion of her hands.  She staggered toward the platform, and when the Magistrate caught her arm, she fell against him like some tottering marble image, entirely unconscious.

* * * * *

So prolonged and death-like was the swoon, and so futile the usual methods of restoration, that the prisoner was carried into the small ante-room, and laid upon a wooden bench; where a physician, who chanced to be in the audience, was summoned to attend her.  Finding restoratives ineffectual, he took out his lancet: 

“This is no ordinary fainting fit.”

He attempted to roll up one of her sleeves, but seeing this was impracticable, would have unfastened her dress, had not Judge Dent arrested his hand.

“No, doctor; cut out the sleeve if necessary, but don’t touch her otherwise.”

“Let me assist you; I can easily bare the arm.”

As he spoke, Mr. Dunbar knelt beside the bench, and with a small, sharp pen-knife ripped the seam from elbow to shoulder, from elbow to wrist, swiftly and deftly folding back the sleeve, and exposing the perfect moulding of the snowy arm.

“Just hold the hand, Dunbar, so as to keep it steady.”

Clasping closely the hand, which the physician laid in his palm the attorney noted the exquisite symmetry of the slender fingers and oval nails.  He bent forward and watched the frozen face.  When the heavily lashed lids quivered and lifted, and she looked vacantly at the grave compassionate countenances leaning over her, a certain tightening of the hold upon her fingers, drew her attention.  Her gaze fastened on the lawyer’s blue eyes as if by a subtle malign fascination.  The veil that shrouded consciousness was rent, not fully raised; and as in some dream the solemn eyes appeared to search his.  A strange shivering thrill shot along his nerves, and his quiet, well regulated heart so long the docile obedient motor, fettered vassal of his will, bounded, strained hard on the steel cable that held it in thrall.

“You feel better now?” asked the physician, who was stanching the flow of blood.

Still her gaze seemed to penetrate the inmost recesses of the lawyer’s nature, calling into sudden revolt dormant elements that amazed and defied him.

A shadowy smile curved her pale lips.