Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/177

Rh in the case of a prisoner arraigned before him, anxious to get the truth, and leaning to a merciful interpretation where it could not be fully developed. "But why, my child," she asked, "if you were conscious of innocence, did you object to having your trunk opened?"

After a little faltering, Lucy replied that "there was a picture on the top of her trunk she did not wish seen."

"A picture!—of what? or whom?"

"Of that one friend, ma'am, I said I had in the city."

"And who is he?—and how long have you known him?"

"Ever since mother was in the deepest of her troubles; he was the first person that was kind to us, and he has been kind ever since."

"But you do not tell me who this friend is."

"Oh, Charles Lovett, ma'am."

"Ah, I understand now; the son of those friends you are so fond of?" After a little more questioning, cross-examination, and deliberation, Mrs. Hyde asked Lucy if she had any letters from her mother or from Mrs. Lovett; and finding she had, she said, if Lucy would let her see them, and if they corroborated her statements, she would take her, for the present, into her family. "I will not," she said, "send to inquire your character at the places where you lived so long ago. Suspicion might be excited by your not having referred me to the last place you was at."

"That was just what I thought, ma'am; but I did not suppose that anybody but mother and Mrs. Lovett would have thought so for me." Lucy was