Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/120

110 I was prepared for it; had schooled myself for this very thing, you might say; and yet I could not help recoiling. Dropping the paper from my hand, I stood before her, longing and yet dreading to look into her face.

"What does it mean?" she panted; "what, what does it mean? Is the world mad?" and her eyes, fixed and glassy, stared into mine as if she found it impossible to grasp the sense of this outrage.

I shook my head. I could not reply.

"To accuse me," she murmured; "me, me!" striking her breast with her clenched hand, "who loved the very ground he trod upon; who would have cast my own body between him and the deadly bullet if I had only known his danger. Oh!" she cried, "it is not a slander they utter, but a dagger which they thrust into my heart!"

Overcome by her misery, but determined not to show my compassion until more thoroughly convinced of her complete innocence, I replied, after a pause:

"This seems to strike you with great surprise, Miss Leavenworth; were you not then able to foresee what must follow your determined reticence upon certain points? Did you know so little of human nature as to imagine that, situated as you are, you could keep silence in regard to any matter connected with this crime, without arousing the antagonism of the crowd, to say nothing of the suspicions of the police?"

"But—but"

I hurriedly waved my hand. "When you defied the coroner to find any suspicious paper in your possession; when"—I forced myself to speak—"you refused to tell Mr. Gryce how you came in possession of the key"