At an implication so unmistakably suggestive of suspicion Mr. Jeffrey showed fire for the first time.
“Whose word have you for that? A servant’s, so newly come into my house that her very features are still strange to me. You must acknowledge that a person of such marked inexperience can hardly be thought to know me or to interpret rightly the feelings of my heart by any passing look she may have surprised upon my face.”
This attitude of defiance so suddenly assumed had an effect he little realized. Miss Tuttle stirred for the first time behind her veil, and Uncle David, from looking bored, became suddenly quite attentive. These two but mirrored the feelings of the general crowd, and mine especially.
“We do not depend on her judgment alone,” the coroner now remarked. “The change in you was apparent to many others. This we can prove to the jury if they require it.”
But no man lifting a voice from that gravely attentive body, the coroner proceeded to inquire if Mr. Jeffrey felt like volunteering any explanations on this head. Receiving no answer from him either, he dropped the suggestive line of inquiry and took up the consideration of facts. The first question he now put was:
“Where did you find the slip of paper containing these last words from your wife?”
“In a book I picked out of the book-shelf in our room upstairs. When Loretta gave me my wife’s message I knew that I should find some word from her in the novel we had just been reading. As we had been interested in but one book since our marriage, there was no possibility of my making any mistake as to which one she referred.”
“Will you give us the name of this novel?”
“COMPENSATION.”
“And you found this book called COMPENSATION in your room upstairs?”