and he can play on the jury."

"I should not say that he assumed that you were safe, Lydia."

"Oh, yes, he does! Don't be like Benny. She sees me in stripes at once.
What Wiley means is that as long as I am fortunate enough to have the
benefit of his services I'm perfectly safe, not because I did not mean
to kill Drummond, but because he, Wiley, will make the jury cry over me.
Isn't that disgusting?"

"Yes, it is," said Eleanor.

"Oh, Eleanor, you are such a comfort!" said Lydia, and began to cry.
Eleanor had never seen her cry before. She did it very gently, without
sobs, and after a few minutes controlled herself again, and tucked away
her handkerchief and said, "Do you think everyone would hate to have a
car that had killed someone! I shall never drive again, and yet I
couldn't sell it--couldn't take money for it. Will you accept it,
Eleanor? You wouldn't have to drive the way I did, you know."

Eleanor, pleading the shortness of her sight, declined the car.

"You ought to go back and talk to Mr. Wiley, my dear."

Lydia shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't care much what happens to me," she said.

Eleanor hesitated. She saw suddenly that what she was about to say was
the principal object of her visit.

"Lydia, I hope that you will come out all right, but you don't know Dan
O'Bannon as I do, and----"

"You think he will want to convict me?"

"Not you personally, of course. But he believes in the law. He wants to
believe in its honesty and equality. He suffered last month, I know, in
convicting a delivery-wagon driver, and his offense wasn't half as
flagrant as yours. Oh, Lydia, have some imagination! Don't you see that
his own honor and democracy will make him feel it more his duty to
convict you than all the less conspicuous criminals put together?"

A strange change had taken place in Lydia during this speech. At the
beginning of it she had been shrunk into a corner of a deep chair; but
as Eleanor spoke life seemed to be breathed into her, until she sat
erect, grew tense, and finally rose to her feet.

"You mean there would be publicity, political advantage, in sending a
person in my position to prison?"

"Don't be perverse, Lydia. I mean that, more than most men, he will see
his duty is to treat you as he would any criminal. You make it difficult
for me to tell you something that I must tell you. Mr. O'Bannon feels,
I'm afraid, a certain amount of antagonism toward you."

A staring, insolent silence