The testimony of this clerk that the box presented by the district attorney had not come from their store, was the only rift in the otherwise dense cloud of incriminating evidence for the State, and the prosecution closed its case with perceptible gloom hanging over every person connected with the defense, and the jury was grave of face, as men well may be who have the life of a fellow being in their hands.
The prosecution closed at four-thirty and Silvia asked for an adjournment until morning to open her case. The request was granted, and New York spent the night wondering what the "woman lawyer" would do the next day. In the cafés, clubs, hotels, between acts in the theatres, little else was discussed, and the consensus of opinion was that she was doomed to defeat in this her first big trial.
Progressive women grieved over the outlook, for it spelled much of disaster to the woman movement if she should be humiliatingly vanquished. Her friends championed her cause as best they could, vigorously, but not with the genuine enthusiasm they would like to have felt.
New York had never before been so interested in a criminal trial.
CHAPTER XX
A WOMAN AND SPOOKS FIND A LETTER
The trial had been in progress some six days when the State rested its case. None of the family or friends of the defendant underestimated the impression created by the array of facts marshalled by the district attorney. The evidence, though wholly circumstantial, was nevertheless sinister and deadly.
Hilda Ramsey, white and worn, kissed her brother with quivering lips and went out of the court leaning on her husband's arm, and making no pretense of concealing her suffering. Neither her belief in her brother's innocence, nor her confidence in Silvia's ability to prove it, could counteract the pain and humiliation of the past weeks. Ramsey wrung his brother-in-law's hand, and gave him a look more eloquent than words, and Frank bade him brace up. "'Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,' you know, old fellow," he said, with a slap on the shoulder.