My mind was clouded all over, and I
gave up the attempt to clear it in despair.
I was brought before Mr. Robert Nicholson that day, and the fiend
of a quadroon was examined in my presence. The first sight of her
face, with its wicked self-possession, with its smooth leering
triumph, so sickened me that I turned my head away and never
looked at her a second time throughout the proceedings. The
answers she gave amounted to a mere repetition of the deposition
to which she had already sworn. I listened to her with the most
breathless attention, and was thunderstruck at the inconceivable
artfulness with which she had mixed up truth and falsehood in her
charge against my mistress and me.
This was, in substance, what she now stated in my presence:
After describing the manner of Mr. James Smith's arrival at the
Hall, the witness, Josephine Durand, confessed that she had been
led to listen at the music-room door by hearing angry voices
inside, and she then described, truly enough, the latter part of
the altercation between husband and wife. Fearing, after this,
that something serious might happen, she had kept watch in her
room, which was on the same floor as her mistress's. She had
heard her mistress's door open softly between one and two in the
morning--had followed her mistress, who carried a small lamp,
along the passage and down the stairs into the hall--had hidden
herself in the porter's chair--had seen her mistress take a
dagger in a green sheath from a collection of Eastern curiosities
kept in the hall--had followed her again, and seen her softly
enter the Red Room--had heard the heavy breathing of Mr.
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