Читать книгу The Millbank Case: A Maine Mystery of To-day онлайн

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Unless one knew the unbending spirit of the man in matters of right and wrong, he must fail to understand the keenness of feeling covered by the apparently cold, formal statement of fact to which Judge Parlin had confined his written words. To the witness on the witness rack, however, those words were as if the living man spoke again and laid bare a heart torn with the humiliation of self-condemnation, more terrible to him than the judgment of any human tribunal. Realising the bitterness of spirit in which he had spoken, she was stirred anew by that long-dead instinct of protection, which had made her weakness a shield in the past to his strength, and held high her head, too proud of her dead to allow any one to find in her the faintest blame for this strong spirit whose words she, and she alone, read to their last meaning.

The hush that followed the reading was that strong suspension of every function which betokens deep emotion. Before the mass had recovered, the coroner’s voice broke harshly upon them: