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Gissing, George, 1857-1903

"The Unclassed"

It troubled him a
little to find with what complete calmness he could await the
result; often he said to himself that he must be sadly lacking in
human sympathy. Julian Casti, on the other hand, had passed into a
state of miserable deadness; Waymark in vain tried to excite hope in
him. He came to his friend's every evening, and sat there for hours
in dark reverie.
"What will become of her!" Julian asked once. "In either case--
what will become of her!"
"Woodstock shall help us in that," Waymark replied. "She must get a
place of some kind."
"How dreadfully she is suffering, and how dark life will be before
her!"
And so the day of the trial came. The pawnbroker's evidence was
damaging. The silver spoon had been pledged, he asserted, at the
same time with another article for which Ida possessed the
duplicate. The inscriptions on the duplicates supported him in this,
and he professed to have not the least doubt as to the prisoner's
identity. Pressed in cross-examination, he certainly threw some
suspicion on the trustworthiness of his assertions. "You positively
swear that these two articles were pledged by the prisoner, and at
the same time!" asked the cross-examiner.


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