upstairs. The scene which had just passed was
unreal, impossible; yet every limb was quivering. Then the sound of the
front door shutting sent a shock through her whole nature. The first
sensation was one of horrible emptiness, forlornness. The next--her mind
threw itself with fresh vehemence upon the question, "Can I, by any
means, get my way with Aldous?"

CHAPTER XIII.

"And may the Lord have mercy on your soul!" The deep-pitched words fell
slowly on Marcella's ears, as she sat leaning forward in the gallery of
the Widrington Assize Court. Women were sobbing beside and behind her.
Minta Hurd, to her left, lay in a half-swoon against her sister-in-law,
her face buried in Ann's black shawl. For an instant after Hurd's death
sentence had been spoken Marcella's nerves ceased to throb--the long
exhaustion of feeling stopped. The harsh light and shade of the ill-lit
room; the gas-lamps in front of the judge, blanching the ranged faces of
the jury; the long table of reporters below, some writing, but most
looking intently towards the dock; the figure of Wharton opposite, in
his barrister's gown and wig--that face of his, so small, nervous,
delicate--the frowning eyebrows a dark bar under the white of the
wig--his look, alert and hostile, fixed upon the judge; the heads and
attitudes of the condemned men, especially the form of a fair-haired
youth, the principal murderer of Charlie Dynes, who stood a little in
front of the line, next to Hurd, and overshadowing his dwarf's
stature--these things Marcella saw indeed; for years after she could
have described them point by point; but for some seconds or minutes her
eyes stared at them without conscious reaction of the mind on the
immediate spectacle.

In place of it, the whole day, all these hours that she had been sitting
there, brushed before her in a synthesis of thought, replacing the
stream of impressions and images. The crushing accumulation of hostile
evidence--witness after witness coming forward to add to the damning
weight of it; the awful weakness of the defence--Wharton's irritation
under it--the sharpness, the useless, acrid ability of his
cross-examinations; yet, contrasting with the legal failure, the
personal success, the mixture of grace with energy, the technical
accomplishment of the manner, as one wrestling before his
equals--nothing left here of the garrulous vigour and brutality of the
labourers' meeting!--the masterly use of all that could avail