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re of disdain.
"Save your sophistries; they are wasted here. Why multiply cobwebs? I understand you. If doves have a sixth sense that warns them before they hear the hawk's cry, or discern the shadow of his circling wings, and if mice, dumb in a cat's claws, surmise the exact value of the preliminary caresses, the graceful antics, the fatal fondling of the velvet paw, so we, the prey of legal 'Justice' know instinctively what the swinging of censers, and the chanting of her high priest mean, when he draws near us. I understand you. You intend to hang me if you can."
He drew his breath with a hissing sound, and a dark flush Stained his broad smooth brow.
"On my honor as a gentleman, I came here to-day solely to--"
"Solely to assure yourself of some doubtful link you must weld into your chain; solely to plunge the scalpel of some double-edged question. If there must be an ante mortem examination, we will wait, if you please, for the legal dissection when I am stretched before the jury-box. Until then, you have no right to intrude upon the misery you have brought on an innocent woman."
They stood so near each other, that he could count the fierce throbbing of the artery in her round snowy throat, and see the shadow of her long lashes; and again some electric current flashed from her feverishly bright eyes, burning its way to the secret chambers of his selfish heart, melting the dross that ambition and greed had slowly cemented, and dropping one deathless spark into a deep adytum, of the existence of which he had never even dreamed. Unconsciously he leaned toward her, but she pressed back against the iron bars, and drew her dress aside as if shunning a leper. There was no petulance in the motion, but its significance pricked him, like a dagger point.
"It was the hope of finding you an innocent woman, that must plead my pardon for what you consider an unwarrantable 'intrusion.' Will you believe me, if I swear to you, that I have come as a friend?"
"As a friend to me? No