This was in the early summer; and Elizabeth's trial was to be in November. The time approached, and nothing had been heard of Julian Gerard. Efforts were made to postpone the trial, that this important witness might have time to appear. But the influence of people like the Van Antwerps, which seems in some ways all-powerful, is in others curiously slight. The District Attorney was acting in the interests of the yellow journals and they, according to their own account, in the interests of the people, which required, as they set forth in high-sounding editorials, that no more favor should be shown to Miss Van Vorst than to the lowest criminal.

After all, the girl's health had suffered so severely from the long confinement that it seemed a cruelty to lengthen it, even with the hope of Gerard's return. Mr. Fenton himself was of opinion that the trial should not be postponed. He had done his best for his client, though hampered more, perhaps, than he realized by his secret doubt of everything she said. He did not believe in this alibi, which she had trumped up, as he decided, when the one person who could confirm or deny it was safely out of the way. Yet he tried to find some other witness who remembered, or imagined having seen her at the Museum on the morning when she was supposed to have been in Brooklyn. No such person could be found. The case for the defence was lamentably weak. Mr. Fenton admitted the fact to himself with a shrug of the shoulders, and fell back philosophically on his conviction that no jury would send a young woman of Elizabeth's position and attractions to the electric chair.

Perhaps the person most to be pitied in those days was Miss Cornelia, who had been summoned as witness for the prosecution to corroborate the testimony of Bridget O'Flaherty, her former waitress, as to her niece's words and manner on the morning after the murder. The poor lady was in a pitiful state of agitation. "What shall I say?" she asked, looking appealingly from one to the other of Elizabeth's friends and advisers.

"Say anything," said Mrs. Bobby, hastily, "any—any lie that you can invent."

She stopped. Miss Cornelia drew herself up with dignity. "I don't think our child's cause can be helped by—by lies, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said.

Mrs. Bobby felt herself rebuked. "Well, I am not given to lies myself, as a rule," she explained, apologetically, "but in a case like this it seems to me that the end justifies the means. It's a doctrine brought into discredit, I know, by the Jesuits, but still it seems to have a certain foundation in common-sense."

"I don't know anything about the Jesuits," said Miss Cornelia, with some stiffness, "but I shall try to act as our Church would advise, even—even if Elizabeth"—here her voice broke.

"I think," said Bobby Van Antwerp, coming to the rescue, "that Miss Cornelia is right, Eleanor. It is much better to tell the exact truth, and Fenton will make the best of it.—Good Heavens," he said afterwards to his wife, "you don't suppose that the poor lady could invent a plausible story, or even keep back anything that wouldn't be brought out in cross-examination and make a worse effect than if she gave it of her own accord!"

But upon Miss Cornelia the opposite side of the question was beginning to make an impression. Her mind moved slowly. It was not easy for her to break from old tradition. Her conscience had hitherto recognized the broadly drawn line between right and wrong; no indefinite, subtle gradations. As she had said once to Elizabeth, fully meaning it, one could always do right if one tried. But if—if one could not tell what the right was?...

Miss Joanna, sitting opposite to her in the twilight, broke the silence hesitatingly. "I suppose, sister," she said, "I suppose you remember—exactly what the poor child said—that morning? You haven't"—Miss Joanna caught her breath—"you haven't forgotten?" There was a note of entreaty in her voice.

Miss Cornelia could see it so plainly; the breakfast table and the paper with those startling headlines, and the look on Elizabeth's face, when she had made that extraordinary assertion. A confession of guilt! That was the way in which it would be construed—there seemed no way out of it. Miss Cornelia did not think that the most merciful jury could acquit her after that. And yet the child was innocent—Miss Cornelia knew that as surely as she knew that the Bible was inspired. Was it reasonable, was it right that she should be required to give evidence against her? Over Miss Cornelia's mind there swept a sudden, sharp sense of injustice, a passionate rebellion against fate.

But a life-long habit of truth-telling is hard to overcome. She answered Miss Joanna after a moment. "I—I haven't forgotten, sister," she said, and the hot tears scorched her eyeballs.

Miss Joanna put away her knitting with a hopeless sigh. "Well, of course, sister, you must speak the truth," she said, drearily, "but—it does seem hard." Then she went out of the room, crying quietly.

Miss Cornelia sat motionless in the twilight, while that new tumult of rebellion still raged within her. Ah, yes, it seemed more than hard—it seemed cruel, unjust, that such a thing should be required of her. Those strange people, the Jesuits, whom she had always held in horror, had some reason on their side after all. There were cases to which the simple, old-fashioned rules of right and wrong did not apply, which were extraordinary, unprecedented.... Miss Cornelia could not help asking herself—with a thrill of self-condemnation, indeed, and yet another feeling which defended the question—whether in certain circumstances, the wrong were not more to be commended, wiser, better than the right.

She spent a sleepless night, thinking it over. The whole foundations of her life, of her faith seemed shaken. She looked the next morning so exhausted, when she went down as usual to The Tombs, that Elizabeth at once divined that some new misfortune had happened, and it was not long before she drew it out of her.

She sat for a long time very still, one hand clasping Miss Cornelia's, the fingers of the other tapping on the ledge of the wall beside her.

"Of course, auntie," she said at last, quietly, "you must tell exactly what happened. There's no good to be gained by lies; at least"—she made an attempt at a smile—"my own success in that line hasn't been very striking. I was a little out of my head that morning, and I don't remember exactly what I said! but whatever it was"—she raised her head proudly—"I don't want anything kept back. Let them know the whole truth; then, if they condemn me, well and good. At least I shan't have anything"—her voice faltered—"anything more to reproach myself with."

"Elizabeth!" The older woman gazed up at her admiringly. "You are so brave—you are a lesson to me! But you—you don't realize, my darling—" sobs choked her voice.

"Oh, yes—I realize." A pale smile flitted across the girl's face. "I have realized—quite clearly—all these months. But that's no reason, auntie, why you should save me by lies."

And then she turned the subject, and began to talk calmly enough, about one of the women prisoners, in whose case she took a keen interest. Nothing more was said about her own affairs. She had relapsed, since that conversation months before with Mrs. Bobby, into her old reserve, and spoke very little of herself. The cooler weather was helping her. She seemed stronger, and always quite calm. Miss Cornelia went away, feeling rebuked for her own cowardice. Elizabeth was right, she thought with a pang of self-reproach; nothing but the truth must be told in her defence. But meanwhile Miss Cornelia tried to reconcile two opposite instincts; offering up day and night two apparently irreconcilable petitions; that she might be enabled to speak the truth exactly, and yet do no harm to her niece's cause.