‘All women are “perfect” till they’re tried,’ uttered the same cynic dryly.
‘Which means that Mercia is no better than she should be,’ laughed another.
‘Perhaps she was too good,’ remarked a third.
‘Which way?’ inquired his friend, poking him with his elbow.
‘That the evidence must show,’ replied another of the coterie.
‘Was there ever a case where the honest, downright truth was given on either side? I never knew one,’ emphatically declared another of the group. ‘It has been the same through all time,’ he added after a pause, ‘for an eminent judge of the nineteenth century averred that throughout the whole course of his long experience on the woolsack he had never come across a case where the evidence was not, in more or less degree, suppressed.’
‘The world’s stage keeps pretty much the same all through the piece; humanity is very human yet;’ sighed a white-haired old gentleman, with a very sweet expression on his countenance.
‘It will be sinfully disappointing if the case is hushed up,’ whispered one man to his neighbour, in another part of the Hall. ‘The Emperor is non est: he has bunked!’
‘What! Has he fled? Impossible! He dare not do so. He threw the gauntlet, and must abide the issue. He cannot run away,’ returned his friend who was bewildered with amazement.
‘All the same, he is off, gone to Berlin on important State affairs, leaving word that the trial could be abandoned altogether, or take its chance without him.’