To Giles Brent the face is an impenetrable mask.
To Elinor Calvert—but how describe the emotions that surge through her soul, each obliterating the former like waves on a beach of sand!
Her first feeling, as she watched Neville stride up the room, was a thrill of pride in his imperious personality as he towered taller by a head than his guard, and in his bearing outranking all present in courtliness.
Then came a longing to speak out before them all and claim him for her true love; then, as her glance travelled upward to that pale set face, the deadly chill of doubt and distrust struck cold upon her heart, and she bowed her head upon her hands.
When she awoke to consciousness of what was passing around she heard the voice of Giles Brent saying,—
"That all here present may understand the business which is going forward, let me first set forth my duties under the law. 'A coroner of our lord the King,' says the statute, 'shall go to the places where any be slain, and shall summon the honest men of the neighborhood, and of them shall inquire what they know touching the death; and if any person is said to be guilty of the murder he shall be brought before the coroner and his inquest, and shall be put upon his defence that he may, if he can, purge himself of the charge.'"
"Oh, dear, how Giles doth love form! I believe he would see us all hung if he might pronounce sentence in Latin." Elinor's foot kept time to her angry thoughts, and that so loud that it caught Brent's ear and brought a frown to his brow.
"Christopher Neville, you stand accused of a dastardly crime,—the murder of Andrew Mohl, a priest of the Jesuit order, who lies here before us, and who is known to have come to his death on the night of January twentieth."
"Who are mine accusers?"