was that I should maintain as much health as possible for the sake of
'others,' if not for myself. She then brought me some tea, which
refreshed me greatly; for I had tasted nothing at all beyond a little
water since the preceding morning's breakfast. This refreshment seemed
to relax and thaw the stiff frozen state of cheerless, rayless despair
in which I had passed the night; I became susceptible of consolation--
that consolation which lies involved in kindness and gentleness of
manner--if not susceptible more than before of any positive hope. I sat
down; and, having no witnesses to my weakness but this kind and
faithful woman, I wept, and I found a relief in tears; and she, with
the ready sympathy of woman, wept along with me. All at once she
ventured upon the circumstances (so far as she had been able to collect
them from the reports of those who had been present at the examination)
of our calamity. There was little indeed either to excite or to gratify
any interest or curiosity separate from the _personal_ interest
inevitably connected with a case to which there were two such parties
as a brutal, sensual, degraded ruffian, on one side in character of
accuser, and on the other as defendant, a meek angel of a woman, timid
and fainting from the horrors of her situation, and under the
licentious gaze of the crowd--yet, at the same time, bold in conscious
innocence, and in the very teeth of the suspicions which beset her,
winning the good opinion, as well as the good wishes of all who saw
her. There had been at this first examination little for her to say
beyond the assigning her name, age, and place of abode; and here it was
fortunate that her own excellent good sense concurred with her perfect
integrity and intuitive hatred of all indirect or crooked courses in
prompting her to an undisguised statement of the simple truth, without
a momentary hesitation or attempt either at evasion or suppression.
With equally good intentions in similar situations many a woman has
seriously injured her cause by slight evasions of the entire truth,