"Your evidence is conclusive, Captain Copplestone, and it exonerates her ladyship from all suspicion," said the coroner.
"My evidence can be confirmed in every particular by my old servant,
Solomon Grundy," said the captain, "if it requires confirmation."
"It requires none, Captain Copplestone."
Reginald Eversleigh gnawed his bearded lip savagely. This man's evidence proved that Lady Eversleigh had not destroyed the will. Sir Oswald himself, therefore, must have burned the precious document. And for what reason?
A horrible conviction now took possession of the young baronet's mind. He believed that Mary Goodwin's letter had been for the second time instrumental in the destruction of his prospects. A fatal accident had thrown it in his uncle's way after the execution of the will, and the sight of that letter had recalled to Sir Oswald the stern resolution at which he had arrived in Arlington Street.
Utter ruin stared Reginald Eversleigh in the face. The possessor of an empty title, and of an income which, to a man of his expensive habits, was the merest pittance, he saw before him a life of unmitigated wretchedness. But he did not execrate his own sins and vices for the misery which they had brought upon him. He cursed the failure of Victor Carrington's schemes, and thought of himself as the victim of Victor Carrington's blundering.
The verdict of the coroner's jury was an open one, to the effect that "Sir Oswald Eversleigh died by poison, but by whom administered there was no evidence to show."
The general opinion of those who had listened to the evidence was that the baronet had committed suicide. Public opinion around and about Raynham was terribly against his widow. Sir Oswald had been universally esteemed and respected, and his melancholy end was looked on as her work. She had been acquitted of any positive hand is his death; but she was not acquitted of the guilt of having broken his heart by her falsehood.
Her obscure origin, her utter friendlessness, influenced people against her. What must be the past life of this woman, who, in the hour of her widowhood, had not one friend to come forward to support and protect her?
The world always chooses to see the darker side of the picture. Nobody for a moment imagined that Honoria Eversleigh might possibly be the innocent victim of the villany of others.