She was proving herself her aunt’s own niece. Her voice sounded defiant; her eyes had lost their look of entreaty and confronted the lawyer in a way which made him feel very uncomfortable. He looked up at the spider’s web. The fly had veered away from it, and the spider was in pursuit. His fly might escape him if he were not more wary and discreet. He must prove that Jack Percy, as John Pennington, had been the lover of this girl, whom he disliked to catechize as much as she disliked to have him. After a little more skirmishing on his part, and evasion on Elithe’s, he cleared his throat, gave one look at the big spider swinging down from the ceiling and said, “Miss Hansford, I believe you were engaged to marry Mr. Percy, were you not?” The effect was wonderful. Elithe had not expected this in so bare-faced a form, and it roused her to a pitch of high excitement. “Engaged to Mr. Percy! I? Never! It is false; all false. Why will you torture me so? Why will anybody believe it, when it is not true? I was never engaged to him; never could have been. Never! He was my _friend_. That was _all_. I shall say no more about him, or anything else.” She emphasized the “all” and the “friend” with a stamp of her foot and a nod of her head, and, without being told to go, walked deliberately from the place where she had been standing. No effort was made to recall her. She felt that she was through and put out her hand to find her chair. “Let’s go out! Can’t we?” she said to her aunt, whose shoulder she grasped in her blindness. Everything swam around her. The voice of the lawyer, asking if she were not engaged to Jack Percy, kept sounding like thunder. Paul’s face was seen through a mist,—troubled, anxious and sorry; the floor came up to meet her, and, by the time she reached the door, led by her aunt, she fainted. Instantly Paul arose to go to her,—then sank back with a groan, remembering he was not free. “Go to her, father. Don’t let everybody touch her,” he called aloud to his father, who hastened to the room where she was being shaken and fanned, and deluged with water and strangled with hartshorn and camphor, until she came back to consciousness. “What have I done? Where have I been?” she said. “Been through a thrashing machine and come out whole,” her aunt said, wiping the water from her hair and dress, and putting on her hat. “Are they through? Is it over? Will they let him go?” she asked. No one replied, except to say that she was through and could go home as soon as she liked. “Take my carriage. It’s too far for her to walk,” Judge Ralston said, putting her and her aunt into it, and then returning to his wife. It was Tom who drove Elithe home and said to her as he lifted her out, “He’ll get off yet.” “Get off! What nonsense! We’ve hung him,” was Miss Hansford’s retort, as she hurried Elithe into the house. It was very hot and close indoors and Elithe felt that she should suffocate if she staid there.