I was cautioned in the usual manner and asked if I had anything
to say.
I replied that I was innocent, but that I would wait for legal
assistance before I defended myself. The justice remanded me and
the examination was over. Three days later my unhappy mistress
was subjected to the same trial. I was not allowed to communicate
with her. All I knew was that the lawyer had arrived from London
to help her. Toward the evening he was admitted to see me. He
shook his head sorrowfully when I asked after my mistress.
"I am afraid," he said, "that she has sunk under the horror of
the situation in which that vile woman has placed her. Weakened
by her previous agitation, she seems to have given way under this
last shock, tenderly and carefully as Mr. Philip Nicholson broke
the bad news to her. All her feelings appeared to be strangely
blunted at the examination to-day. She answered the questions put
to her quite correctly, but at the same time quite mechanically,
with no change in her complexion, or in her tone of voice, or in
her manner, from beginning to end. It is a sad thing, William,
when women cannot get their natural vent of weeping, and your
mistress has not shed a tear since she left Darrock Hall."
"But surely, sir," I said, "if my examination has not proved
Josephine's perjury, my mistress's examination must have exposed
it?"
"Nothing will expose it," answered the lawyer, "but producing Mr.
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