She cries out strongly, almost triumphantly: “With all my heart and soul.”
The advocate for the Crown turns away. He has scored a great point. The jury have doubtless been moved by that cry of love and faith, but he, Sir Almeric Post, will soon show them, with the pitiless logic for which he is famed, that the very fact of this overwhelming passion discredits the whole of the evidence Jean Bower has just tendered in so lifeless and composed a manner.
The entire crux of the case turns on what were the real relations of Henry Garlett and Jean Bower before Mrs. Garlett’s death. Were the girl to admit even warm innocent friendship on her employer’s part she would be helping to prove the case for the Crown. And now, who, with any knowledge of feminine human nature, can doubt that she has lied—splendide mendax, as the old Latin tag puts it—“a splendid lie, but a lie all the same?”
“Thank you, Miss Bower; that will do,” he says suavely.
As Sir Harold Anstey is taking the place of his brother advocate in order to re-examine the unhappy girl who all unwittingly has done his client such a fatal mischief by that cry of devoted love, there is an unwonted stir, even a struggle, at one of the doors. Across the now silent Court ring out the words:
“I must speak now—I must speak now!”
The judge leans forward, and Sir Harold turns round, a frown on his face. For the moment public attention is diverted from the slight figure in the witness-box.
Sir Harold, after a whispered word with the Crown counsel, observes:
“One of the female witnesses has only just arrived, my lord, and she seems to have become hysterical.”
Again the loud wailing, the unrestrained voice is heard: