He is tall, fair haired, handsome; the carriage of his head, the haughtiness of his bearing, reminds more than one present of Clifford Heath, as they first knew him. He is a stranger to all W——, and "Who is he? Who is he?" runs from lip to lip.
The stranger is seemingly oblivious of the attention lavished upon him; he bends forward at times, and whispers a word to the prisoner, or his counsel, and he turns occasionally to murmur something in the ear of Constance Wardour, who sits beside him, grave, stately, calm.
She is accompanied by Mrs. Aliston and Mrs. O'Meara, and Ray Vandyck sits beside the latter lady, and completes the party.
Mr. Lamotte is there, subdued, yet affable, and Frank, too, who is paler than usual, but quite self-possessed.
Near the party above mentioned, may be seen the two city physicians, but, and here is another cause for wonderment, Doctor Benoit is not present; and, who ever knew the good doctor to miss an occasion like this?
"Business must be urgent, when it keeps Benoit away from such a trial," whispers one gossip to another, and the second endorses the opinion of the first.
Sitting there, scanning that audience with a seemingly careless glance, Constance feels her heart sink like lead in her bosom.
She feels, she knows, that already in the minds of most, her lover is a condemned man. She knows that the weight of evidence will be against him. They have a defense, it is true, but nothing will overthrow the fact that John Burrill went straight to the house of the prisoner, and was found dead hard by.
All along she has hoped, she knew not what, from Bathurst. But since he returned Sybil's note in so strange and abrupt a manner, she has had no word or sign from him, and now she doubts him, she distrusts everything.
But, little by little, day by day, she has been schooling her heart to face one last desperate alternative. Her lover shall be saved! Let the trial go on. Let the worst come. Let the fatal verdict be pronounced, if it must; after that, perish the Wardour honor. What if she must trample the heart out of a mother's breast? What if she must fling into the breach the life of a blighted, wronged, helpless, perhaps dying sister woman?