“Yes,” and Natalie’s big blue eyes were violet with horror. “She had! And she stood there, just as Blake said, one hand on the table, and one clutched to her breast. She did do it, Mr. Coroner. She must have been out of her mind, you know, but she did it, for I saw her.”
“Saw her kill him?”
“No, not that. But I saw her just after the deed was done, and she was the picture of guilty fear!”
If Natalie could have been transferred to canvas as she looked then, the picture would have made any painter’s fortune. The girl was in white, soft, crêpy wool stuff, that clung and fell in lovely lines, for the gown had been designed by no less a genius than Stannard himself. It was his whim to have Natalie about the house in the gowns in which he posed her, that he might catch an occasional unexpected effect. But the simple affair was not out of place as a morning house-gown, and more than one woman in the audience took careful note of its cut and pattern. Her golden hair was carelessly tossed up in a mass of curls, held with one hair-pin, a huge amber thing, that threatened every minute to slip out, and one couldn’t help wishing it would. Her wonderful eyes had long dark lashes, and her pink cheeks were rosy now, because of her nervous excitement. So thin was her delicate skin that her hands and throat were flushed a soft pink and her curved lips were scarlet. Yet notwithstanding the marvellous colouring, there was not one iota of doubt that it was Nature’s own. The play of rose and white in her cheeks, the sudden occasional paling of the red lips and the perfection of the tiny shreds of curl that clustered at her throbbing temples all spoke of the real humanity of this girl’s beauty. Small wonder the artist wanted her for his own pictures exclusively! Joyce was a beautiful woman, but this child, this fairy princess, was a dream, a very Titania of charm and wonder.
Not by her testimony, not by words of assertion, but by her ethereal, her incredible beauty, this wonder-girl took captive every heart and, without effort, secured the sympathy and belief of everybody present.
And yet, the Coroner had to do his duty. Had to say, in curt, accusing tones, “Then how do you explain Mr. Stannard’s dying words, ‘Natalie, not Joyce!’?”
The red lips quivered, the roseleaf cheeks grew pinker and great tears formed in the appealing blue eyes.
“Don’t ask me that!” she cried; “oh, pray, don’t ask me that!”
“But I do, I must ask you. And I must ask you why you stabbed him? Had he asked you to pose in any way to which you were unwilling to consent? Had he insisted, after you refused? Was he tyrannical? Brutal? Cruel? Did you have to defend yourself? Was it on an impulse of sudden anger or indignation?”
“Stop! Stop!” cried Natalie, putting her pink finger tips into her tiny, rosy ears. “Stop! He was none of those things! He was good to me, he—he——”