It was the same
kind of passion--the shaken and heart-riven woe of a creature who
has trusted and hoped joyously and has been forever betrayed. The
face and eyes had been so kind. The voice so friendly! Oh, how
could even the wickedest girl in the world have doubted their
sincerity. Unfortunately--or fortunately--she knew nothing whatever
of the mental processes of the wicked girls of the world, which
was why she lay broken to pieces, sobbing--sobbing, not at the
moment because she was a trapped thing, but because Lady Etynge
had a face in whose gentleness her heart had trusted and rejoiced.
When she sat upright again, her own face, as she lifted it, would
have struck a perceptive onlooker as being, as it were, the face
of another girl. It was tear-stained and wild, but this was not the
cause of its change. The soft, bird eyes were different--suddenly,
amazingly older than they had been when she had believed in Helene.
She had no experience which could reveal to her in a moment the
monstrousness of her danger, but all she had ever read, or vaguely
gathered, of law breakers and marauders of society, collected
itself into an advancing tidal wave of horror.
She rose and went to the window and tried to open it, but it was
not intended to open. The decorative panes were of small size
and of thick glass. Her first startled impression that the white
framework seemed to be a painted metal was apparently founded on
fact.
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