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These family arrangements, however, and the modified happiness obtained by their means, were still all in the future, when John Tatham, a little afraid of the encounter, yet anxious to have it over, went to Ebury Street the day after these occurrences, to see Elinor for the first time under her new character as Lady St. Serf. He found her in a languor and exhaustion much unlike Elinor, doing nothing, not even a book near, lying back in her chair, fallen upon herself, as the French say. Some of those words that mean nothing pa.s.sed between them, and then she said, "John, did Pippo tell you that he had been there?"
He nodded his head, finding nothing to say.
"Without any warning, to see his mother stand up before all the world to be tried--for her life."
"Elinor," said John, "you are as fantastic as the boy."
"I was--being tried for my life--before him as the judge. And he has acquitted me; but, oh, I wonder, I wonder if he would have done so had he known all that I know?"
"I do so," said John, "perhaps a little more used to the laws of evidence than Pippo."
"Ah, you!" she said, giving him her hand, with a look which John did not know how to take, whether as the fullest expression of trust, or an affectionate disdain of the man in whose partial judgment no justice was. And then she asked a question which threw perhaps the greatest perplexity he had ever known into John Tatham's life. "When you tell a fact--that is true: with the intention to deceive: John, you that know the laws of evidence, is that a lie?"
THE END.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR IN UNIFORM STYLE
MARRIAGE OF ELINOR WHITELADIES THE MAKERS OF VENICE
CHICAGO W. B. CONKEY COMPANY
