Miss Farnham's sense of the fitness of things was plainly affronted.
"Do you mean to say that you would accept the reward, Mr. Latrobe?"
"Most certainly I should; any one would."
The frank avowal stood for public opinion. Charlotte knew it and went dumb in the presence of a new and more terrible phase of her entanglement. She might call the reward blood money, and refuse absolutely to touch it, but who, outside of her own little circle, would know or believe that she had refused? And if all the remainder of the world knew and should exonerate her, would not the wretched man himself always believe that she had sold him for a price?
The benumbing thought left her tongue-tied and miserable; and after the table-dispersal she sought out the captain to ask a question.
"Do you know the law in Louisiana, Captain Mayfield?" she began, with more embarrassment than the simple inquiry would account for. "This man who robbed the Bayou State Security yesterday; what is the penalty for his crime?"
The captain shook his head. "I don't know: being only a riverman, I'm not even a sea-lawyer. But maybe Mr. Latrobe could tell you. _Oh_, Mr. Latrobe!"
The loquacious one was on his way forward to smoke, but he turned and came back at the captain's call.
"The penalty?" he said, when the query had been repeated to him; "that would depend upon a good many things that could only be brought out at the trial. But under the circumstances--threatening to shoot the president, and all that, you know--I should say it would go pretty hard with him. He'll probably get the full limit of the law."
"And that is?" persisted Charlotte, determined to know the worst.
"Thank you; that is what I wished to find out."
The little man bowed and went his way; and Captain Mayfield, who was an observant man in the field of river stages and other natural phenomena, but not otherwise, did not remark Miss Farnham's sigh which was more than half a sob.
"Twenty years!" she shuddered; "it might as well be for life. He would be nearly fifty years old, if he lived through it."
It did not occur to the captain to wonder how Miss Farnham came to know anything about the bank robber's age, but he spoke to the conditional phrase in her comment.