dia for the grand jury in ten thousand dollars' bail.
This had been considered a foregone conclusion and did not particularly
distress or alarm Eleanor. What did alarm her was her inability to get
in touch with O'Bannon. In all the months of their quick, intimate
friendship this had never happened before. Press of business had never
kept him entirely away. Now she could not even get him to come to the
telephone.

She was not the only person who was attempting to see him on Lydia's
behalf. Bobby Dorset had made several efforts, and finally caught him
between the courthouse and his office. Bobby took the tone that the
whole thing was fantastic; that O'Bannon was too much of a gentleman to
send any girl to prison, irritating the man he had come to placate by
something frivolous and unreal in his manner--the only manner Bobby
knew.

And then as Lydia's case grew darker Albee came. O'Bannon was in his
study at home, the low-ceilinged room opening off the dining room. It
had a great flat baize-covered desk, and low open shelves running round
the walls, containing not only law books, but novels and early
favorites--Henty and Lorna Doone and many records of travel and
adventure.

Here he was sitting, supposed to be at work on the Thorne case, about
nine o'clock in the evening. Certainly his mind was occupied with it and
the papers were laid out before him. He was going over and over, the
same treadmill that his mind had been chained to ever since he had stood
by Drummond's bedside with Alma Wooley clinging, weeping, to his hand.

Lydia Thorne had committed a crime, and his duty was to present the case
against the criminal. Sometimes of course a district attorney was
justified in taking into consideration extenuating circumstances which
could not always be brought out in court. But in this case there were no
extenuating circumstances. Every circumstance he knew was against her.
Her character was harsh and arrogant. She had already violated the law
in bribing Drummond. First she had corrupted the poor boy, and then she
had killed him. She deserved punishment more than most of the criminals
who came into his court, and his duty was to present the case against
her. He repeated it over and over to himself. Why, he was half a crook
to consider this case as different from any other case--and if she did
get off she wouldn't be grateful. She'd just assume that there had not
been and never could be any question of convicting a woman