She had never, she said, bought the flask which contained the poison, nor had she ever seen one exactly like it. She had not gone to Brooklyn on the twenty-third of December—she had never gone there in her life. She had spent the morning of the twenty-third of December at the Metropolitan Museum. She had not bought the bottle of arsenic, and knew nothing of it. She had no reason to expect Paul Halleck's death. She had read of it in the papers. No, she had not meant the assertion literally when she said that she had killed him; she had been startled because his death had seemed to come in direct answer to her wishes, and she had somehow felt accountable for it. Yes, it was a morbid idea—she realized it now, but she had not been at all well at the time. That was the reason she had gone up to the studio; she had been in a state of nervous excitement and hardly knew what she did. No, she had not thought of the police suspecting her in consequence; such an idea had never entered her mind.
On the whole, Mr. Fenton was satisfied with the effect that she was producing. He had made the agreeable discovery that he was beginning to believe in her himself; and if this conviction was impressing itself more and more upon his own suspicious mind, it must, he thought, be all-powerful with the jury, whom he had already mentally appraised as kindly men, anxious to escape from an unpleasant duty, and willing to give the prisoner the full benefit of every doubt.
But when Mr. Fenton at last sat down and the District Attorney took his place, then, indeed, began a very bad quarter of an hour for Elizabeth. Question by question, the lawyer drew out of her her reasons for keeping her marriage secret and for wishing Halleck dead, her engagement to Gerard and the manner in which she had deceived him. Her color changed from white to red and back again to ghastly pallor, her voice faltered and broke piteously, but still the terrible inquiry proceeded. Behind her, her aunts were biting their lips in agony and Mrs. Bobby was beside herself with indignation. "I'd give anything in the world," she said to her husband, "to get even with that man." Elizabeth's counsel was keeping up a running fire of objections, but in vain. The District Attorney got in his questions somehow or another, and Elizabeth answered them as best she could.
"Why," she was asked among other things, "was your engagement to Mr. Gerard broken off?"
"Because," she faltered, "I—I told him of my marriage."
"Why did you suddenly tell him, when you had kept it concealed so long?"
Elizabeth looked up with a piteous appeal in her eyes, which was answered by an objection on the part of her counsel, and she was told by the Judge that she need answer no question unless she wished. But by this time she had recovered herself.
"I am quite willing to answer," she said. "I told him because I was sorry I had deceived him. I had no other reason."
"You are quite sure that you did tell him, and that he did not—find out for himself?"
There was an insulting tone to the question, but she answered it steadily, without anger. "I am quite sure," she said.