The puddle is suddenly drained off into some law-ordained receptacle, and the white lily is swept away with it. She will not long suggest a flower that has been dropped into the gutter. The stains upon her soul will creep up into her face, and make her hideous like the rest.
The case of Egbert Haldane was next called. As the policeman had said, his own admissions were now used against him, for the confidential clerk, and, if there was need, the broken-nosed reporter, were on hand to testify to all that had been said. The young man made no attempt to conceal, but tried to explain more fully the circumstances which led to the act, hoping that in them the justice would find such extenuating elements as would prevent a committal to prison.
The judge recognized and openly acknowledged the fact that it was not a case of deliberate wrongdoing, and he ordered the arrest of the superior young gentleman who had introduced the New York gamblers to their victim; and yet in the eye of the law it was a clear case of embezzlement; and, as Mr. Arnot's friend, the magistrate felt little disposition to prevent things from taking their usual course. The prisoner must either furnish bail at once, or be committed until he could do so, or until the case could be properly tried. As Haldane was a comparative stranger in Hillaton there was no one to whom he felt he could apply, and he supposed it would require some little time for his mother to arrange the matter. Upon his signifying that he could not furnish bail immediately, the judge promptly ordered his committal to the common jail of the city, which happened to be at some distance from the building then employed for the preliminary examinations.
It was while on his way to this place of detention that he heard Mrs. Arnot's voice, and encountered her eyes and those of Laura Romeyn. His first impulse was to end both his suffering and himself by some desperate act, but he was powerless even to harm himself.
The limit of endurance, however had been reached. The very worst that he could imagine had befallen him. Laura Romeyn had looked upon his unutterable shame and disgrace. From a quivering and almost agonizing sensibility to his situation he reacted into sullen indifference. He no longer saw the sun shining in the sky, nor the familiar sights of the street; he no longer heard nor heeded the jeering rabble that came tramping after. He became for the time scarcely more than a piece of mechanism, that barely retained the power of voluntary motion, but had lost ability to feel and think. When, at last, he entered his narrow cell, eight feet by eight, the wish half formed itself in his mind that it was six feet by two, and that he might hide in it forever.