Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/65

Rh Recalled to myself, I turned my back upon what had so interested me even while it repelled, and forcing myself to make some sort of reply to the fair creature before me, offered my arm and led her toward the door.

Immediately the pale, proud countenance of Mary Leavenworth softened almost to the point of smiling;—and here let me say, there never was a woman who could smile and not smile like Mary Leavenworth. Looking in my face, with a frank and sweet appeal in her eyes, she murmured:

"You are very good. I do feel the need of support; the occasion is so horrible, and my cousin there,"—here a little gleam of alarm flickered into her eyes—"is so very strange to-day."

"Humph!" thought I to myself; "where is the grand indignant pythoness, with the unspeakable wrath and menace in her countenance, whom I saw when I first entered the room?" Could it be that she was trying to beguile us from our conjectures, by making light of her former expressions? Or was it possible she deceived herself so far as to believe us unimpressed by the weighty accusation overheard by us at a moment so critical?

But Eleanore Leavenworth, leaning on the arm of the detective, soon absorbed all my attention. She had regained by this time her self-possession, also, but not so entirely as her cousin. Her step faltered as she endeavored to walk, and the hand which rested on his arm trembled like a leaf. "Would to God I had never entered this house," said I to myself. And yet, before the exclamation was half uttered, I became conscious of a secret rebellion against the thought; an emotion, shall I say, of thankfulness that it had been myself rather than another who had been allowed to break in