Sylvia, too, had wept. It was pitiful. The proud, arrogant woman Fate had reduced to a cowering crone.
Meanwhile also Sylvia had tried to see Fanny. But at the hotel where Mrs. Price had been stopping she was informed that both were away. An address was given her to which she wrote. For a time no answer came. Finally from a different address Mrs. Price replied saying that Fanny was ill and asking that their whereabouts be a secret. In spite of the little threat Fanny was not anxious to be subpoenaed.
But that was much later, long after Harris had told the story which Mr. Digby declared to be very good.
This opinion, editorial and offhand though it was, was immediately and officially endorsed. For the story had a double merit. It supplied not merely a clue but a case. A very clear case, too. There was the antecedent threat, the opportunity, the instrument, everything even to the motive which was reasonable enough. The inevitable ensued. Annandale, arrested, was held without bail.
At the news of that Sylvia shuddered. Time touched her. Her eyes ringed themselves with sudden circles. The shuddering passed, but the rings remained. She became whiter, harder, more resolute, divining dimly that somewhere, somehow, there was a duty to be performed. What the duty was to be the press disclosed. Against Annandale was public opinion. There he was convicted instanter. At the injustice, or what seemed to her the injustice, of that she revolted.
But Orr, whom Annandale had immediately retained, dosed her with a platitude. “Public opinion be hanged,” he said. “What is it but the stupidity of one multiplied by the stupidity of all. Vox populi, vox stulti. The majority is always cocksure and dead wrong.”
In spite, though, of general stupidity there were people sufficiently indulgent to accord Annandale the benefit of extenuating circumstances.