Witness. "Playing billiards generally."
The Attorney-general. "Now, in all the questions I have asked and you have answered, there are two subjects upon which no definite information has been forth-coming. Give your best attention to them. Are you aware that before or at the time of the prisoner's engagement with your mistress he had been or was engaged to another lady? Take time. You have said that you were in the confidence of your mistress, and that she used to speak freely to you. At any period during these communications did she refer to another engagement?"
Witness. "It was in this way, and I can't answer the question in any other."
The Attorney-general. "Answer it as best you can."
Witness. "At one time my mistress said, 'I wonder if Mr. Layton, before he saw me, was ever in love?' That was the way it was first introduced. I did not know how to answer her without running the risk of hurting her feelings, but she pressed me, and I was forced to say I thought it very unlikely that a gentleman as good-looking as he was should not have had his fancies. She pressed me further until I said there were very few men of his age who had not been in love. She appeared distressed at this, but soon brightened up, and said, 'What is that to me so long as he is mine?' But it weighed upon her mind, as was proved by her telling me at another time that she had asked Mr. Layton whether he had ever been in love, and that he would not give her any satisfaction--which, to my mind, was quite as good as his confessing that he had been. These conversations between my mistress and me took place in the early days, and for some time after her marriage she did not say anything more about it. But when she was laid on a sick-bed--I mean within a few months of her being murdered--"
The Attorney-general. "Do not say that. It is for the jury to decide. Say within a few months of her death."
Witness. "Well, within a few months of her death she told me at least half a dozen times that she had discovered he had been in love with another lady, and that she believed he was so when he married her. She said it was wicked and abominable, and that if she saw 'the creature' she would kill her."
The Attorney-general. "Supposing this to be true, your mistress never discovered who this other lady was?"
Witness. "Never to my knowledge."
The Attorney-general. "As to your mistress's attachment to her husband, did it ever, in your knowledge, grow weaker?"