Sims then laid the warrant upon the table before their worships, and retreated behind the chair of his prisoner.
Sir Ira Brunton adjusted his spectacles, took up the warrant, looked over it, and then addressing the accused, said, coldly:
“Will you please to throw aside your veil, Miss Leaton?”
Eudora, with trembling fingers, obeyed, and revealed a face, so deathly in its pallor, that those who looked upon it shrank back and uttered exclamations of pity, for they thought the girl must be dying.
“Miss Leaton,” pursued Sir Ira Brunton, “the warrant that I hold here charges you with the murder, by the administration of poison, of the late Lord and Lady Leaton and their daughter, the Hon. Agatha Leaton. I must say that I grieve exceedingly to see one of your age and sex and rank stand before us charged with so heinous a crime.”
The deadly pallor of Eudora’s cheeks were suddenly flushed with a hectic spot, as she faltered forth:
“I am guiltless; oh, sir, you who have known me ever since I came, an orphan, in this strange land, should know that I am.”
“God grant that it may prove so,” said the magistrate, sternly.
And the investigation immediately commenced. First, the minutes of the coroner’s inquest were read; and then the witnesses were examined in turn.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Vose, was called, and with many tears, and much reluctance, gave in her testimony: