thinking, "What business have you
interfering in my fate?" But he was not the figure she was most aware
of. It was the district attorney, whose excitement she knew was as great
as her own.

"How say you?" said a voice. "Guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty of manslaughter in the second degree," answered the foreman.

Lydia knew every eye in the court room was turned on her. She had heard
of defendants who fainted on hearing an adverse verdict--keeled over
like dead people. But one does not faint from anger, and anger was
Lydia's emotion--anger that "that man" had actually obtained the verdict
he wanted. Her breath came fast and her nostrils dilated. How sickening
that she had nothing to do but stand there and let him triumph! No
subsequent reversal would take away this moment from him.

The jury was thanked and dismissed. Wiley was busy putting in pleas that
would enable her to remain at liberty during the appeal of her case. She
stood alone, still now as a statue. She was thinking that some day the
world should know by what methods that verdict had been obtained.

She had behaved well during her trial; had lived a life of retirement,
seeing no one but Wiley and her immediate friends. But there was no
further reason for playing a part. On the contrary she felt it would
relieve her spirit to show the world--and O'Bannon--that she was not
beaten yet. She did not intend to look upon herself as a criminal
because he had induced a jury to convict her.

She bought herself some new clothes and went out every night, dancing
till dawn and sleeping till noon. She began a new flirtation, this time
with a good-looking insolent young English actor, Ludovic Blythe, hardly
twenty-one, with a strange combination of wickedness and naivete that
some English boys possess. Her friends disapproved of him heartily.

At his suggestion she engaged a passage for England for early July.
Wiley warned her that it was unlikely that the decision in her case
would be handed down as soon as that, and if it were not she could not
leave the country.

"There's no harm in engaging a cabin, is there?" she answered.

Her plan was to take in the end of the London season, with a few house
parties in the English country, to spend September in Venice, two weeks
in Paris buying clothes, and to come home in October.

"To Long Island?" Miss Bennett asked.

"Of course. Where else?" answered Lydia. "Do you think I shall allow
myself to be driven out of my ow