Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/160

 been to her, all that she had looked for from him, all the hope that had illumined the dark days of her imprisonment, lit up her bare cell, flushed its soft light over the court-house that dreadful day, the day that until now had been the most dreadful day of all her life.

A hundred eyes had been upon her, had burnt greedily into her soul—curious eyes, searching eyes, eyes all around. All the air was alive with voices-voices that rose and fell monotonous, persistent, dreadful. What were they saying? Now a sentence disentangled itself, now another. "The prisoner pleads guilty, my lord." "The prisoner!" How curious it sounded. "The prisoner!" How should she know anything of prisoners, dreadful creatures, shameful, lowering, hideous? She had dreamed of them in her happy childhood, and awaking, shuddering, had hidden her face in nurse's breast, or been soothed to rest again in father's arms.

"The prisoner is separated from her husband," went on that monotonous voice. How strange, she was separated from her husband; strange she should be like the prisoner, a shameful, disgraced prisoner. And dreaming she smiled, smiled in the dock, with a hundred opera glasses scanning her fair pale face, and a hundred naked eyes burning into her secrets.

But the smile woke her, she had always smiled; but now, now it was a long time since she had