“Oh!” she wailed forth, reeling heavily back and almost succumbing to the shock, she had so thoroughly convinced herself that what she said was true.  But hers was a courageous soul.  She rallied instantly and approaching him again with face uncovered and her whole potent personality alive with magnetism, she retorted: 

“You say that, eye to my eye, hand on my hand, heart beating with my heart above the grave of our children’s mutual happiness?”

“I do.”

Convinced; for there was no wavering in his eye, no trembling in the hand she had clasped; convinced but ready notwithstanding to repudiate her own convictions, so much of the mother-passion, if not the wife’s, tugged at her heart, she remained immovable for a moment, waiting for the impossible, hoping against hope for a withdrawal of his words and the reillumination of hope.  Then her hand fell away from his; she gave a great sob, and, lowering her head, muttered: 

“John Scoville smote down Algernon Etheridge!  O God!  O God! what horror!”

A sigh from her one auditor welled up in the silence, holding a note which startled her erect and brought back a memory which drove her again into passionate speech: 

“But he swore the day I last visited him in the prison, with his arms pressed tight about me and his eye looking straight into mine as you are looking now, that he never struck that blow.  I did not believe him then, there were too many dark spots in my memory of old lies premeditated and destructive of my happiness; but I believed him later, and I believe him now.”

“Madam, this is quite unprofitable.  A jury of his peers condemned him as guilty and the law compelled me to pass sentence upon him.  That his innocent child should be forced, by the inexorable decrees of fate, to suffer for a father’s misdoing, I regret as much, perhaps more, than you do; for my son—­beloved, though irreconcilably separated from me—­suffers with her, you say.  But I see no remedy;—­no remedy, I repeat.  Were Oliver to forget himself so far as to ignore the past and marry Reuther Scoville, a stigma would fall upon them both for which no amount of domestic happiness could ever compensate.  Indeed, there can be no domestic happiness for a man and woman so situated.  The inevitable must be accepted.  Madam, I have said my last word.”

“But not heard mine,” she panted.  “For me to acknowledge the inevitable where my daughter’s life and happiness are concerned would make me seem a coward in my own eyes.  Helped or unhelped, with the sympathy or without the sympathy of one who I hoped would show himself my friend, I shall proceed with the task to which I have dedicated myself.  You will forgive me, judge.  You see that John’s last declaration of innocence goes farther with me than your belief, backed as it is by the full weight of the law.”

Gazing at her as at one gone suddenly demented, he said: