swelled within her indignant heart as all the facts in that dread
tragedy were slowly revealed one by one. Coming to this task with a mind
convinced at the outset of her father's innocence, she met with not one
circumstance that could shake that conviction for a moment. In her own
strong feeling she was incapable of understanding how any one could
honestly think otherwise. The testimony of adverse witnesses seemed to
her perjury, the arguments of the lawyers fiendish malignity, the last
summing up of the judge bitter prejudice, and the verdict of the jury a
mockery of justice.

* * * * *




CHAPTER III.


THE MOMENTOUS RESOLVE.

Early on the following morning Miss Plympton called on Edith, and was
shocked to see the changes that had been made in her by that one night.
She did not regard so much the pallor of her face, the languor of her
manner, and her unelastic step, but rather the new expression that
appeared upon her countenance, the thoughtfulness of her brow, the deep
and earnest abstraction of her gaze. In that one night she seemed to
have stepped from girlhood to maturity. It was as though she had lived
through the intervening experience. Years had been crowded into hours.
She was no longer a school-girl--she was a woman.