Her words and manner did her no good; their only effect upon the jury was to convince them that Mrs. Berners had inherited all the furious passions of her forefathers, and that she was an excessively high-tempered and high-spirited young lady, quite capable of doing a very rash deed.
"Patience, patience, my dearest one," whispered her husband, as he passed his arm behind her.
"I cannot be patient or prudent, Lyon, under such insults. I cannot, if they kill me," she fiercely whispered back.
"Hush, hush," he said, softly patting her shoulder.
And then both became quiet, while the business of the trial proceeded.
The State's Attorney, Charles Coldman, took the bill of indictment from the hand of the clerk, and proceeded to open the case. Mr. Coldman was not the friend of the accused, neither was he her enemy. He did not belong to the old aristocracy of the State, neither had he distinguished himself in any manner. A successful lawyer he was, in so far as he had attained his present position, but no farther. He had never been admitted within the exclusive circles of Black Hall, or shared its hospitalities. And if this exclusion did not make him the enemy of the lady of that manor, it certainly did not embarrass him with any of those old associations of friendship and intimacy, such as might have distressed him, had he been, like nearly all the other members of the Blackville bar, the frequent guest of her father and her husband.
Thus the State's Attorney could deal with the lady of Black Hall, as he would deal with any other person on trial at that court.
He opened the indictment, and gave the theory of the crime. Here was no complication, he said, and no uncertainty. The case was so clear, that it need occupy the court but a little time. He then, in a grand, eloquent, and highly colored style, described the murder. He drew a moving-picture of the lovely young victim, whose fair image many who were present, he said, would recall with tears of pity; he described her accepting the invitation of the jealous mistress of Black Hall, and drawn within its dread doors, as a bird is enticed into the trap which is to be its destruction. He showed her on that fatal Hallow Eve reposing in her chamber, sleeping the sleep of innocence in fancied security. He painted, in lurid colors, the form of the murderess stealing down the stairs that led to her victim's room, "in the dead waste and middle of the night," creeping to the innocent sleeper's bedside, and plunging the fatal dagger in her peaceful, unsuspicious bosom. He described the startled look and cry of the victim, shocked from calm repose by a violent and bloody death; the scene of confusion, horror, and terror that ensued; the dying words of Rosa Blondelle, charging Sybil Berners with her death. He adverted to the guilty flight of the murderess and the desperate means she and her friends had taken even to the immolating of other lives, to secure her escape; until at length, unable to hold out against the authorities any longer, she had surrendered at discretion, and made a merit of giving herself up to justice. All this, he concluded, he should undertake to prove to the gentlemen of the jury.
He then proceeded to call the witnesses for the prosecution. The first witness called to the stand was—Sybil's best friend, Captain Clement Pendleton of Pendleton Park.
He came forward slowly, with a pale, stern face. He would rather have lost his power of speech, than have used it for her detriment. But he was known to have been present at the death of Rosa Blondelle, and he was therefore subpoenaed to attend the trial as a witness for the prosecution.