"I believe I have something of yours," he said. "I want to give it back." He was fumbling in his pocket. She couldn't really permit that. "Bribed people," she thought, "must be content to remain bribed." She walked rapidly toward her car without answering. The chauffeur opened the door for her. "Home," she said, and drove away. An hour or so later the judge was giving a description of the interview to the district attorney. It began as a general indictment of the irresponsibility of the wealthy young people of to-day, touching on their dress, appearance and manners. Then it descended suddenly to the particular case. "She came into this room in a hat the color of a flamingo"--the judge's color sense was not good--"and her skirts almost to her knees; as bold--well, I wouldn't like to tell you what my first idea was on seeing her. She was as hard as--I could have told her that some of her own father's methods were not strictly legal, only the courts were more lenient in those days. A ruthless fellow--Joe Thorne. Do you know this girl?" "I've met her," said O'Bannon. "She made a very unfavorable impression on me," said Judge Homans. "I don't know when a young woman of agreeable appearance--she has considerable beauty--has made such an unfavorable impression." And His Honor added, as if the two remarks had nothing to do with each other, "I shall give this unfortunate maid a very light sentence." The district attorney bowed. It was exactly what he had always intended. But a sentence which sounded light to Judge Homans--not less than three and a half nor more than fifteen years--sounded heavy to Lydia. She was horrified. The recent visit which, under Mrs. Galton's auspices, she had paid to a man's prison was in her mind--the darkness, the crowded cells, the pale abnormal-looking prisoners, the smell, the guards, the silence. She simply would not allow Evans to spend fifteen years in such torture. She was all the more determined because she knew, without once admitting it, that she might have prevented it. She read the sentence in the local newspaper at breakfast--she breakfasted in bed--and the next minute she was up and in Miss Bennett's room. "This is a little too much," she said, walking in so fast that her silk dressing gown stood out like a rose-colored balloon. "Fifteen years! Those men must be mad! Come, Benny, put on your things. You must go with me to the district attorney's office and have this arranged. Imagine it! After her confessing too! I said she was wrong to confess." But when she reached the office she found no one there but Miss Finnegan, the stenographer. "Where's Mr. O'Bannon?" she asked as if she had an engagement with him which he had broken. Miss Finnegan raised her head from her keys and looked at the unexpected visitor in a tomato-colored hat, whose feet had sounded so sharp and quick on the stairs and who had thrown open the door so violently.