“The deceased, Matilda, Baroness Leaton, of Allworth, and her daughter, the Honorable Agatha Leaton, came to their deaths by the poison of Ignatia, administered in tamarind-water by the hands of Eudora Leaton.”
A warrant was made out for the arrest of Eudora Leaton, and put in the hands of an officer for immediate execution.
“There! what do you think of that? Has my charge been proved? Is my statement confirmed by the coroner’s inquest? What is your opinion now?” inquired the doctor of Malcolm Montrose, who had been a pale and agonized spectator of the scene.
“My opinion is what it ever has been and ever will be—that Eudora Leaton is innocent; innocent as one of God’s holy angels; and upon that issue I stake my every earthly and every heavenly good, my every temporal and every eternal hope, my life, honor, and soul!”
“Then you’ll lose them, my young friend, that is all. Ah, Montrose, it is hard to believe in atrocious crimes, even when we see them recorded in newspaper paragraphs as committed by strangers and at some distance; but we are appalled and utterly incredulous when they come closely home to ourselves. This self-deception is natural, for doubtless other great criminals have seemed to their own partial friends as unlikely to commit the crimes of which they have been convicted, as this beautiful young demon has seemed to us. People of notoriously bad character seldom or never commit great crimes. They seem to fritter away their natural wickedness in a succession of small felonies. It is your quiet, respectable, commonplace people that poison and assassinate just as though they hoarded all their sinfulness for one grand exploit.”
“Sir, you treat the deepest tragedies of human life, the tragedies of crime and death, with a levity unbecoming your age, your profession, and the circumstances in which we are placed,” said the young man, in bitter sorrow.
“I treat the subject with levity! I never was in more solemn earnest in my life! If you doubt my words, recall your own experience. Recollect all the greatest criminals within your own knowledge, and say whether they were not every one of them, according to their social positions, very decent, very respectable, or very genteel persons—until they were clearly convicted of capital crimes? I could name a score within my own memory, only Heaven pardon them, as they have paid the penalty of their crimes, I do not wish to vex their ghosts by calling up their names and deeds to recollection.”
Montrose did not reply. He could scarcely follow the doctor in his discourse. His thoughts were all engaged with the hapless Eudora and the train of unutterable misfortunes that lay before her.
While he stood in bitter sorrow, a constable, holding a warrant in his hand, approached, and touching his hat to the doctor and Mr. Montrose, requested that they would please accompany him to the chamber of Miss Leaton, that he might serve the warrant.