Thorne had been fond of telling a story about Lydia in her childhood—in the days before Miss Bennett came to them. After some tremendous scene of naughtiness and punishment, she had come to him and said: "Father, if you're not angry at me any more, I'm not angry at you." It was characteristic of her still. She was not afraid to come forward and make up, but she was shy with the spoken word. She couldn't make an emotional apology, but she managed to convey in all sorts of dumb ways that she wanted to be friends—she contrived to remember some long ungratified wish of Benny's, whether it were a present, or a politeness to some old friend, or sometimes only an errand that Benny had never been able to get her to do. There was always a definite symbol that Lydia was sorry, and she was always forgiven.
Part of Eleanor's sense of her own superiority to the world lay in being more than usually impervious to emotion. Besides she had expressed herself satisfactorily at the time by leaving the house, so that she forgave too. Only of course a scene like that is never without consequences—everybody's endurance had snapped a few more strands like a fraying rope. And there were consequences, too, in Lydia's own nature. She seemed to have become permanently wrong-headed and violent on any subject even remotely connected with the district attorney.
This was evident a few days later when a voice proclaiming itself that of Judge Homans' secretary asked her if she could make it convenient to stop at the judge's chambers that afternoon to give the court some information in regard to a former maid of hers—Evans. Lydia's tone showed that it was not at all convenient. It seemed at one instant as if she were about to refuse point-blank to go. Then she yielded, and from that minute it became clear that her mind was continually occupied with the prospect of the visit.
Late in the afternoon she appeared before the judge's desk in his little room, lined with shelves of calf-bound volumes. It was a chilly November afternoon, and she had just come from tea at the golf club after eighteen holes. She was wrapped in a bright golden-brown coat, and a tomato-colored hat was pulled down over her brows.
The judge, for no reason ascertainable, had imagined Miss Thorne, the landed proprietor, the owner of jewels of value, as a dignified woman of thirty. He looked up in surprise over his spectacles. His first idea—he lived much out of the world—was that a mistake had been made and that an unruly female offender had been brought to him, not a complaining witness.
Even after this initial misunderstanding was explained the interview did not go well. The judge was a man of sixty, clean shaven and of a waxy hue. From his high, narrow brow all his lines flowed outward. His chin was heavy and deeply creased, and he had a way at times of drawing it in to meet his heavy, hunched shoulders. A natural interest in the continuity of his own thought, joined to fifteen years of pronouncements from the bench, rendered him impervious to interruption. He now insisted on reviewing the case of Evans, while Lydia sat tossing back first one side and then the other of her heavy coat and thinking—almost saying, "Oh, the tiresome old man! Why does he tell me all this? Doesn't he know that it was my jewels that were stolen?" She began to tap her foot, a sound which to those who knew Lydia well was regarded almost as the rattle of the rattlesnake. The judge began to draw his monologue to a close.
"The district attorney tells me that you feel that there was some carelessness on your own part which might be considered in a measure as constituting an extenuating circumstance"
He got no further.
"The district attorney says so?" said Lydia, and if he had quoted the authority of the janitor's boy her tone could not have expressed more contemptuous surprise.
His Honor, however, missed it.
"Yes," he went on, "Mr. O'Bannon tells me that the charge of your safe, without supervision"
"Mr. O'Bannon is completely misinformed," said Lydia, shutting her eyes and raising her eyebrows.
The judge turned his head squarely to look at her.
"You mean," he said, "that you do not feel that there was any contributory carelessness which might in part explain, without in any true sense excusing"
"Certainly not," said Lydia. "And I have never said anything to anyone that would make them think so."
"I have been misinformed as to your attitude," said the judge.
"Evidently," said Lydia, and almost at once brought the interview to a close by leaving the room.