FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   202  
203   204   205   206   207   208   209   210   211   212   213   214   215   216   >>  
the nervous play of her fingers, as he had read many another human emotion in his time. "There must be somebody," he repeated. "There is only Martha," she answered at last, yielding to his influence. "She was my nurse when I was a child. She is as poor as I am. She will come to me if you will send word to her. They would not listen to me at Rosenthal's when I begged them to bring her to the store." She lifted her head and stared wildly about her. "Oh, the injustice of it all--and the awful horror of this place! How can men do such things? I told them the truth, Father, I told them the truth. I never stole it. How could I ever steal anything? How dared he speak to me as he did?" She turned, straining her whole body as if in mortal anguish; then, with her shoulder against the hard, whitewashed wall, she broke at last into sobs. The priest sat still, waiting and watching, as a surgeon does a patient slowly emerging from delirium. "Men are seldom reasonable, my good woman, when they lose their property, and they often do things which they regret afterward. Of what were you accused?" His tone reassured her, and, for the first time, she looked directly at him. "Of stealing a mantilla which I had taken to my rooms to repair." "Whose was it?" "Rosenthal's, for whom I worked." "The large store near by here, on Third Avenue?" "Yes." Father Cruse lapsed once more into silence, absorbed in a study of certain salient points of her person--her way of sitting and of folding her hands, her thin, delicately modelled frame, the pallor of her oval face, with its mobile mouth, the singular whiteness of her teeth, and the blue of her eyes, shaded by the cheap, black-straw hat which hid her forehead. Then he glanced at her feet, one of which protruded from her coarse skirt--no larger than a child's. When he spoke again, it was in a positive way, as if his inspection had caused him to adopt a definite course which he would now follow. "This old nurse of yours, this woman you called Martha, does she know of any one who could get bail for you? You can only stay here for a few hours, and then they will take you to the Tombs, unless some one can go bail. I know the Rosenthals, and they would, I think, listen to any reasonable proposition." "Would they let me go home, then?" "Yes, until your trial came off." She shuddered, hugging herself the closer. Her mind had not gone that far. It was the present horror that ha
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   191   192   193   194   195   196   197   198   199   200   201   202  
203   204   205   206   207   208   209   210   211   212   213   214   215   216   >>  



Top keywords:

things

 

horror

 

Father

 

reasonable

 

Martha

 

listen

 
Rosenthal
 

singular

 
mobile
 
whiteness

closer

 
shaded
 
absorbed
 

silence

 
salient
 

present

 
lapsed
 

points

 
person
 

forehead


modelled

 
pallor
 

delicately

 

sitting

 

folding

 

protruded

 

called

 

proposition

 

larger

 

coarse


Rosenthals

 

glanced

 

shuddered

 
definite
 
follow
 

caused

 

positive

 

inspection

 

hugging

 

property


injustice

 

stared

 
wildly
 

straining

 
mortal
 
turned
 

lifted

 
emotion
 
nervous
 

fingers