be glad to see him in his own private room.
Here the old man addressed the young one in
terms of the warmest congratulation and
sympathy. He spoke highly of the manner in which
the defence had been conducted, and of
Penmore's courage in undertaking it. He even
predicted great things for the young barrister's
future, promising that, he would most certainly
keep his eye upon him, and making Gilbert
promise in turn that if any occasion should ever
offer in which he—the justice—could help him,
he would always remember that he had a friend
at hand who would only be too glad to serve
him. The justice would not keep him now, as
there were sacred claims upon every moment of
his time, but begged that he might see him again
very shortly.

As Penmore came out of the justice's room,
he fell at once into the hands of a group of
attorneys who were waiting to catch him. These
gentlemen—and Mr. Craft was among the foremost
of them—were eager to congratulate him,
and plied him with offers of employment whenever
he should be ready to take it. Nay, one
of them did actually, then and there, thrust a
brief into his hand, retaining him upon the spot,
and Gilbert found it in his pocket hours afterwards
where he had thrust it away, not knowing
very well what he was doing.

"I'll tell you what, Mr. Penmore," quoth
Craft, as they were about to part company,
"you was right about it, sir, and I was wrong.
You've got the head of a lawyer, and, what I
didn't think, the tongue of a lawyer too. And
as to your foreign accent, it don't stand in your
way a bit, and after the first few sentences, and
when you begin to warm to your work, hang me
if one thinks of it at all."

Gilbert broke away from this worthy gentleman
and his colleagues as quickly as he could.
His heart was literally charged with pent-up
feeling, and he could not speak. One thing,
and one thing only, he could think of; it was
his longing to be alone—alone with Gabrielle.
Nothing but that could be thought of now.
Nothing else was tolerable.

It came at last—the time when they could be
alone. For a while it was thought better that
they should remain within the precincts of the
court, the crowd being so great outside, and
likely to recognise them. And it was not till it
had got to be quite dark that at last they were
got out at a side-door and smuggled away in a
cab. Ah, those cabs! always ready. Their aid
is called in, in all sorts of emergencies, of joy
and sorrow. The man who is summoned to a
death-bed far away dashes off to the railway
station in a cab, and he who, after long years of
absence, returns home to loving friends, hurries
away from the terminus, as the other hurried to
it—still in a cab. It was in a cab that Gabrielle
was taken from her home to a prison, and it
is in a cab that she travels now from the prison
to her home.

They are together and alone at last, and so
we will for the time leave them. The heaviness,
endured for the night, is past, and the
morning joy has come. On such joy we have
no right to intrude. What pen could deal with
it, even were it right to attempt to do so? We
can fancy their speechless happiness, but we
will not speak of it. These two wished to be
alone with their enormous joy, and surely they
shall have their wish.

CHAPTER XXXVII. THE SUN COMES OUT.

THERE was one person, and one person only,
to whom the issue of that trial with which we
have so long been occupied, not only failed to
bring any satisfaction, but caused, on the
contrary, an acute and sudden anguish, such as
might move our pity if it did not excite rather
our feelings of aversion and horror. Jane
Cantanker remained still about the court after her
evidence had been given, eagerly listening to,
and closely watching, all that was said and done.
She was there when Gilbert commenced his
speech for the defence, and she smiled with
contempt as she listened to its confident tone. She
was there when Vampi gave his evidence, and as
he spoke, and as the other witnesses for the
defence told, each one, his tale, there crept in
upon her heart a sort of doubt—arising there
for the first time—about the issue of the trial.
She would not entertain that doubt, however.
She put it away from her by main force. Had
it not been evident all along how the thing was
to end. It was hardly to be a trial at all. A
conviction and a sentence; all things pointing
one way from the beginning. The reply of the
prosecution gave her a sort of horrible comfort
again. Yes, yes, it was as she had thought.
That momentary doubt of hers had been an
impertinence. How was it she had ever listened
to it? The prosecutor knew better, of course,
and how finely he was demolishing that trumpery
attempt at a defence.

But when the end drew near, and it began to
be evident which way the verdict would go,
when this merciless woman saw that the event
was likely to turn out so differently from what
she had anticipated, then, indeed, such rage and
disappointment took possession of her as a
tigress might feel in seeing the hunter who had
destroyed her cubs escape out of her reach.
She listened with a sort of incredulous eagerness.
She questioned those about her, as if
doubting the evidence of her own senses. She
asked if it was possible that there was any
chance for the prisoner, if it could be that they
were going to suffer that murderess to escape?
The people whom she thus addressed stared at
her in astonishment. They could not understand
her. "I wish," said one man to whom
she had spoken in such language, "I wish I had
a thousand pounds depending on her getting off.
And as to 'murderess,' she's no more a
murderess than you are yourself, and perhaps not
so much," he added, in a lower key, for the
edification of a friend.

Jane Cantanker did not heed his words. She
became more and more excited, and when at last
the verdict was given, and she knew that her
enemy was free, she lost all self-control, and
screamed aloud that her mistress had been
murdered, and that her death should be avenged,