This was the severest ordeal Alden Lytton had to bear. For he knew he had written these foolish letters in his romantic boyhood, and in his manhood he felt heartily ashamed of them. Under any circumstances he would have been heartily ashamed of them. His ears tingled and his face burned to hear them read aloud to judge, jury and gaping crowd.
And then and there he registered a vow never, never, never to write another gushing love-letter so long as he should live in this world; no, not even to his own dear wife.
When the last terrible letter was finished he felt as much relieved as if he had been unbound from the rack.
But his relief was soon superseded by the utmost astonishment when Mr. Martindale took up another parcel, saying:
"The letters that I have just read, your honor, and gentlemen of the jury, were, as you have heard, written from the University of Charlottesville some years ago. Those that I am about to read to you were written from Wendover last year, in the few weeks preceding the marriage of the prisoner with Mary Grey."
And so saying, the State's Attorney proceeded to read, one after the other, all those forged letters which had been executed with inimitable skill by Mary Grey herself and mailed from Wendover by her unconscious confederate, Craven Kyte.
These counterfeits were even fonder, more foolish and more impassioned than the real ones, and every letter pressed speedy marriage, until the last one, which actually arranged the mode and manner of proceeding.
During the reading of the final letter Mr. Alden Lytton beckoned his counsel, who approached him.
"I acknowledge the first batch of folly written from Charlottesville, when I was a boy of eighteen or nineteen," said Alden, between a laugh and a blush.
"Every man has been a boy, and a fool, at least once in his life. I know I have; and I would much rather be hanged than have my letters read," laughingly replied Mr. Berners.