She was not put into the dock, but offered a chair at the table with her counsel. She bowed to the bench before taking her seat. On her right sat her husband; on her left, her friend Beatrix Pendleton, near her counsel. She was very much agitated, but a pressure from the hand of her husband, a glance from the eyes of Ishmael Worth, helped to reassure her.
Nor must the fidelity of another friend, a poor little four-footed friend, be forgotten. Little Nelly had faithfully followed her mistress, and now lay curled up at her feet.
Meanwhile the preliminary forms of the trial proceeded. The jurymen were sworn in and took their seats. Then Mr. Sheridan touched his client's hand to call her attention, while the clerk of arraigns, standing up with an open document in his hands directed the accused to listen to the reading of the indictment.
Sybil raised her head and became attentive, while that officer read aloud the terrible instrument, setting forth that Sybil Berners of Black Hall, in the county of Blank, being instigated thereto by diabolical agency, did, with malice aforethought, on the night of the thirty-first of October ultimo, feloniously break into the chamber of Rosa Blondelle, then residing at Black Hall, in the county of Blank, and there did unlawfully and maliciously stab, kill, and murder the said Rosa Blondelle, etc., etc., etc.
During the reading of this indictment, charging her with a crime at once so base and so atrocious, Sybil's emotions were all revolutionized. No longer unmerited shame and terror had power to bend her soul. The fiery spirit of her race arose within her; the "burning blood" boiled in her veins; a fierce indignation flashed from her dark eyes, like lightning from a midnight cloud; bitter scorn curled her beautiful lips.
When told to stand up, to hold up her hand, and to answer whether she were guilty or not guilty of the felony laid to her charge, she answered haughtily:
"Not guilty, of course, as every one here knows, or should know. No more guilty than were many of the queens and princesses of old, who were martyred for crimes that we in these days know they never committed."
She had exceeded the forms of law, and said more than was necessary; but her heart was on fire, and she could not help it; and no one interrupted her.
"How will you be tried?" proceeded the clerk of arraigns, trying to avoid the beautiful, terrible eyes that were gazing on him.
"By God and—my peers, if indeed I have any peers here," answered this arrogant young Berners, sweeping her full eyes scornfully over the rustic occupants of the jury box, and then resuming her seat.