Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/296

286 I did not hesitate to interrupt her. "Mrs. Belden," I said, "I shall not try to mitigate the blow. A woman who, in the face of the most urgent call from law and justice, can receive into her house and harbor there a witness of such importance as Hannah, cannot stand in need of any great preparation for hearing that her efforts, have been too successful, that she has accomplished her design of suppressing valuable testimony, that law and justice are outraged, and that the innocent woman whom this girl’s evidence might have saved stands for ever compromised in the eyes of the world, if not in those of the officers of the law."

Her eyes, which had never left me during this address, flashed wide with dismay.

"What do you mean?" she cried. "I have intended no wrong; I have only tried to save people. I—I—But who are you? What have you got to do with all this? What is it to you what I do or don’t do? You said you were a lawyer. Can it be you are come from Mary Leavenworth to see how I am fulfilling her commands, and"

"Mrs. Belden," I said, "it is of small importance now as to who I am, or for what purpose I am here. But that my words may have the more effect, I will say, that whereas I have not deceived you, either as to my name or position, it is true that I am the friend of the Misses Leavenworth, and that anything which is likely to affect them, is of interest to me. When, therefore, I say that Eleanore Leavenworth is irretrievably injured by this girl’s death"

"Death? What do you mean? Death!"

The burst was too natural, the tone too horror-stricken for me to doubt for another moment as to this woman’s ignorance of the true state of affairs.