The trial was to begin at ten; but long before that time the court was crowded and all the avenues were blocked with eager and curious people, who were excitedly discussing the incidents of the murder and the chances of the prisoner. Not a few of them had been present at the entertainment, and heard him recite the tragic poem of “Eugene Aram,” and the sensation he had produced was recalled, and put in evidence against him.
No wonder he had made them all shudder and tremble: he who was capable of committing a murder himself, they said.
The story of his mysterious purchase of The Dell and the strangely secluded life he had led, of the man who was always on the watch to keep people from seeing his master, and the dog kept to attack all visitors; what could it mean, but that there was some dark mystery connected with him, of which this crime in the woods was the logical outcome?
At ten o’clock the streets were crowded, and the buzz of excitement grew into something like a roar as the Grange carriage was seen to pull up at the townhall, and the squire, with Olivia and Bessie, alighted. The curiosity to see the beautiful girl who had been stricken down on her wedding day, and had not seen her husband since, overmastered the respect they felt for her, and there was a rush toward the door; but half-a-dozen policemen drove the crowd back and made a lane, and the three passed through it to the hall.
Olivia wore a veil, and her arm trembled for a moment as it rested upon her father’s, but it was only for a moment, and she walked, and compelled him to walk, slowly.
They entered the court, and the crowd made way for them. The judge was making his way to the bench at the moment, and, as he looked round with his calm, serene eyes, he saw the worn, pale face of the squire, and stopped to shake hands with him, and motioned him to seats just below him.
Olivia sat with clinched hands, trying to still the throbbing of her heart; then she looked round. The well of the court was filled with barristers, and among them the great London counsel, Mr. Sewell, the man whose acuteness and eloquence had sent many a man to the scaffold. Beside him she saw—and her heart throbbed again—the terrible London solicitor whose proud boast it was that no malefactor upon whom his legal claws had fixed had ever slipped through them! She looked for Mr. McAndrew, but he was nowhere to be seen. Then she looked toward the dock, and, as she did so, there was a stir and a murmur of excitement, and Harold Faradeane entered.
Pale and haggard, worn thin by the confinement of his cell and his sleepless nights though he was, there was still the look in his dark eyes which, when she had first seen it, had drawn her heart irresistibly toward him: and it drew her now.
He raised his eyes and looked round at the judge and the jury and the counsel, and then he saw her. She, if no one else, saw the light that flashed for a moment in his grave eyes, and the color that passed swiftly over his face.
Obeying an impulse she did not try to resist, she raised her veil, and, looking at him steadily, bowed her head with the deep respect which only a woman can convey in a bow.