As she fell again into her seat, the judge turned to Reuther: 

“Leave your mother for a little while,” he urged with that rare gentleness he always showed her.  “Let her rest here a few minutes longer, alone with me.”

“Yes, Reuther,” murmured Deborah, seeing no way of avoiding this inevitable interview.  “I am feeling better every minute.  I will come soon.”

The young girl’s eye faltered from one to the other, then settled, with a strange and imploring look upon her mother.  Had her clear intelligence pierced at last to the core of that mother’s misery?  Had she seen what Deborah would have spared her at the cost of her own life?  It would seem so, for when the mother, with great effort, began some conciliatory speech, the young girl smiled with a certain sad patience, and, turning towards Judge Ostrander, said as she softly withdrew: 

“You have been very kind to allow me to mention a name and discuss a subject you have expressly forbidden.  I want to show my gratitude, Judge Ostrander, by never referring to it again without your permission.  That you know my mind,”—­here her head rose with a sort of lofty pride which lent a dazzling quality to her usually quiet beauty,—­“and that I know yours, is quite enough for me.”

“A noble girl! a mate for the best!” fell from the judge’s lips after a silence disturbed only by the faint, far-off murmur of a slowly dispersing throng.

Deborah made no answer.  She could not yet trust her courage or her voice.

The judge, who was standing near, concentrated his look upon her features.  Still she made no effort to meet his eye.  He did not speak, and the silence grew appalling.  To break it, he stepped away and took a glance out of the window.  There was nothing to be seen there; the fence hid all, but he continued to look, the shadows from his soul settling deeper and deeper upon his countenance as each heavy moment dragged by.  When he finally turned, it was with a powerful effort which communicated itself to her and forced her long-bowed head to rise and her troubled mind to disclose itself.

“You wish to express your displeasure, and hesitate on account of Reuther,” she faltered.  “You need not.  We are quite prepared to leave your house if our presence reminds you too much of the calamity I have brought upon you by my inconsiderate revival of a past you had every reason to believe buried.”

His reply was uttered with great courtesy.

“Madam,” said he, “I have never had a thought from the first moment of your coming, of any change in the arrangements we then entered into; nor is the demonstration we have just witnessed a calamity of sufficient importance to again divide this household.  To connect my high-minded son with a crime for which he had no motive and from which he could reap no benefit is, if you will pardon my plain speaking at a moment so critical, even greater folly than to exculpate, after all these years, the man whom a conscientious jury found guilty.  Only a mob could so indulge itself; individuals will not dare.”