at
the expense of the life most dear to you. It is a Roman virtue! I shall
be held up as a model to my sex. All the world must shower plaudits upon
the woman who, sooner than rob justice of its due, delivered her own
lover over to the hangman."

Pausing in her passionate burst, she turned her hot, dry eyes in a sort
of desperation upon his face.

"Do you know," she gurgled in his ear, "some women would kill themselves
before they would do this deed."

Struck to his heart in spite of himself, Mr. Ferris looked at her in
alarm--saw her standing there with her arms hanging down at her sides,
but with her two hands clinched till they looked as if carved from
marble--and drew near to her with the simple hurried question of:

"But you?"

"I?" she laughed again--a low, gurgling laugh, that yet had a tone in it
that went to the other's heart and awoke strange sensations there. "Oh,
I shall live to respond to your questions. Do not fear that I shall not
be in the court-room to-morrow."

There was something in her look and manner that was new. It awed him,
while it woke all his latent concern.

"Miss Dare," he began, "you can believe how painful all this has been to
me, and how I would have spared you this misery if I could. But the
responsibilities resting upon me are such----"

He did not go on; why should he? She was not listening. To be sure, she
stood before him, seemingly attentive, but the eyes with which she met
his were fixed upon other objects than any which could have been
apparent to her in his face; and her form, which she had hitherto held
upright, was shaking with long, uncontrollable shudders, which, to his
excited imagination, threatened to lay her at his feet.

He at once started toward the door for help. But she was alive to his
movements if not to his words. Stopping him with a gesture, she cried:

"No--no! do not call for any one; I wish to be alone; I have _my_ duty
to face, you know; my testimony to prepare." And rousing herself she
cast a peculiar look about the room, like one suddenly introduced into a
strange place, and then moving slowly toward the window, threw back the
curtain and gazed without. "Night!" she murmured, "night!" and after a
moment added, in a deep, unearthly voice that thrilled irresistibly upon
Mr. Ferris' ear: "And a heaven full of stars!"

Her face, as she turned it upward, wore so strange a look, Mr. Ferris
involuntarily left his position and crossed to her side. She w