The Argosy — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Sapphire Cross. 113 yet you represent yourself as having been so careless of an object of value as to have heard with indifference that the pawn-ticket, which you supposed to have been given for it, was lost ? ” ‘TI did not care for the cross,” answered Lucia. ‘You must be singularly disinterested.” She made no reply. ‘And you declare that you never even suspected this unaccountable act of generosity on the prisoner’s part until you heard the explanation which he gave to Pietro Siccoli of his possession of the cross ?” **T declare it most solemnly.” Are you quite sure,” resumed the Judge, with an added blandness of cynicism, ‘‘that this explanation of the prisoner’s did not suggest to you the whole of the story which you have just related ?” “You have called me that I might tell the truth, I believe,” an- swered Lucia; and, for the first time, a sparkle of indignant scorn shone for an instant in her eyes. The President changed his ground. ‘‘Is it true that you engaged the counsel for the prisoner’s defence ? ” “Tt is quite true.” With his consent ?” ‘Without his consent, and without his knowledge.” “Remember, you have asserted most positively that the prisoner stood to you in the relation of a mere acquaintance,” the President remarked warningly. Lucia clasped her hands with a nervous movement of distress. It was curiously characteristic of her absolute self-forgetfulness that never until that moment had she asked herself how Guido might regard her generous interest in his fate. Now, when called upon to justify that interest, the knowledge of the wasted form behind the iron bars was far more intolerable to her than the cruel cross-examination or the pitiless curiosity of the crowd. ‘Tt is true he was nothing to me,” she said, in low tones. ‘ No- thing but a neighbour, with whose struggles I was acquainted and whose misery I had seen.” | Her eyes filled with tears. Blessed misery! happy struggles! where were they now? “It is a very unusual action to oblige, unsought, a person whose only claim upon one’s sympathy is an accident of neighbourhood,” observed the Judge. ‘Perhaps it is unusual,” said Lucia, simply. “I never thought of that.” The President felt the perfect good faith of this answer to be dangerously telling, and summoned a fresh supply of irony to over- whelm it. “Am I to conclude that you are animated with feelings of disin- terested benevolence towards every poor and struggling young man of your acquaintance ?” he asked suavely. MII. comicbooks.cO