‘Oh! because it was a secret.’
The counsel of course availed himself of this handle to elicit that the witness had conducted a secret correspondence between the prisoner and her young friend without the knowledge of the child’s natural protectors. ‘A perfect romance,’ he said, ‘I believe the prisoner is unmarried.’
Perhaps this insinuation would have been checked, but before any one had time to interfere, Constance, blushing crimson, exclaimed, ‘Oh! Oh! I assure you it was not that. It was because she said he was her uncle and that they ill-used him.’
This brought upon her the searching question whether the last witness had stated the prisoner to be really her uncle, and Constance replied, rather hotly, that she had always understood that he was.
‘In fact, she gave you to understand that the prisoner was actually related to her by blood. Did you say that she also told you that he was persecuted or ill-used by her other relations?’
‘I thought so. Yes, I am sure she said so.’
‘And it was wholly and solely on these grounds that you assisted in this clandestine correspondence?’
‘Why—yes—partly,’ faltered Constance, thinking of her literary efforts, ‘so it began.’
There was a manifest inclination to laugh in the audience, who naturally thought her hesitation implied something very different; and the judge, thinking that there was no need to push her further, when Mr. Calderwood represented that all this did not bear on the matter, and was no evidence, silenced Mr. Yokes, and the witness was dismissed.
The next point was that Colonel Reginald Mohun was called upon to attest that the handwriting was his brother’s. He answered for the main body of the draft, and the signature, but the additions, in which the forgery lay, were so slight that it was impossible to swear that they did not come from the hand of Maurice Mohun.