In handling the flowers her gloves had been stained, and she now held them in her fingers nervously twisting them as she talked. In the course of time she grew short of subjects, and as her listener suggested nothing, several lapses occurred; in one of them she absently spread her gloves out in her palms, meanwhile wondering how the English girl acted under similar circumstances.
Suddenly a large hand slowly interposed itself between her eyes and her gloves, and then withdrew, taking one of the soiled trifles with it.
She was surprised, but the surprise was pleasurable. She said nothing at first. The prisoner gravely spread his prize out upon his own palm, and after looking at it carefully, he rolled it up into a tight ball and thrust it deep in an inner pocket.
This act made the philanthropist aware that she had made progress. She rose insensibly to the elevation of patron, and she made promises to come frequently and visit her ward and to look in upon him when he was at work; while saying this she withdrew a little from the shade his huge figure had supplied her with.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, but he hastily took them out again. Still he said nothing and hung his head. It was while she was in the mood of a conqueror that Miss Eunice went away. She felt a touch of repugnance at stepping from before his eyes a free woman, therefore she took pains to go when she thought he was not looking.
She pointed him out to a turnkey, who told her he was expiating the sins of assault and burglarious entry. Outwardly Miss Eunice looked grieved, but within she exulted that he was so emphatically a rascal.
When she emerged from the cool, shadowy, and frowning prison into the gay sunlight, she experienced a sense of bewilderment. The significance of a lock and a bar seemed greater on quitting them than it had when she had perceived them first. The drama of imprisonment and punishment oppressed her spirit with tenfold gloom now that she gazed upon the brilliancy and freedom of the outer world. That she and everybody around her were permitted to walk here and there at will, without question and limit, generated within her an indefinite feeling of gratitude; and the noise, the colors, the creaking wagons, the myriad voices, the splendid variety and change of all things excited a profound but at the same time a mournful satisfaction.