I think I see the scene now. The dim court, packed with its restless, seated occupants; the long shafts of light from the Gothic window over the judge's seat, all alive with dust motes; the bearded president, with chin on hand; the intent, puzzled faces of the special jurymen; and Hart-Milner on his feet, relating, in a voice low but distinct, and vibrating with the multiplex humanity that made him the darling of Bar and Commons, the devilish tale of physical and spiritual brutality in which a man had sought revenge for the inferiority that daily self-comparison with a woman high-spirited, witty, and admired enforced upon his own base soul.
At the close of the opening speech the petitioner went into the box. She was a pathetic figure; all the more so, I thought, because she was so beautifully gowned. I remember her dress well. It was of brown silk, with the wide velvet sleeves that no one thought hideous in eighteen hundred and—never mind. She had a flower hat covered with pale blue violets, and a bunch of the same flowers at her breast. She kept her veil down as much as possible, and answered in low monosyllables, or in little, faltering sentences that one could hardly catch, and that often had to be repeated for the benefit of the jury. The questions were frightful. Even Hart-Milner could not do much with them.
Nicholls, with his long, mottled face, and jaw as of a dishonest horse-chaunter, jumped up to cross-examine—loathing his task, but all the more truculent for that.
"Look at these letters, please!"
A bundle of letters, on a woman's fanciful note-paper, sewn into a stiff paper cover, was taken across by the gowned usher.
"They are yours?"
"Yes."
"Some are dated, some aren't. May we take it the undated ones were written within two or three months of those that are?"
"Yes, I think so."