Briefly and casually the Court instructed Hampstead to his rights and that he was entitled to be represented by counsel of his own choosing, or to have counsel appointed for him by the Court.
The minister, still standing and speaking with deliberate composure, thanked the Court for its consideration, but stated that without disrespect to the legal profession which he greatly honored, he did not feel that his cause required expert defense; that in his experience he had acquired a considerable knowledge of court practice and would depend upon that, trusting his Honor to put him right if he stumbled into wrong.
The judge nodded comprehension and assent, and the defendant sat down.
"Are the People ready?" inquired the Court.
"We are," answered the crisp, crackly voice of Searle.
"And the defense?"
Hampstead, his arms folded passively, responded with a slight affirmative bow.
"We will call Miss Alice Higgins," announced Searle, his voice this time reflecting that sense of the dramatic which hung over the court room like a cloud, impregnating its atmosphere as if with an electric charge.
The woman known as Marien Dounay had been sitting at the right of Searle, gowned in tailored black, her person stripped of everything that looked like ornament. The wide, flat brim of her hat was carefully horizontal and valanced by a curtain of veiling, which, while black and large of cord, was wide meshed enough to show that the very colors of her cheeks were subdued, as if her whole person were in mourning over the somber duty to which she regretfully found herself compelled. And yet the beauty of her features, adorned by the black and sweeping eyebrows and lighted by the smouldering jet of her eyes, was never more striking than now, when, after standing for a moment, tall and graceful on the raised platform of the witness chair, she sat down, and leaning back composedly, swung about to where her glance could alternate between the eye of the Court who would hear her and that of Searle who would interrogate.
But though her composure appeared complete, and never upon any stage had her magnetic presence more completely centered all attention upon itself than in this melodrama of real life, it was none the less noticeable to the discerning that she had not glanced at Hampstead, whose sleeve her arm must have brushed in passing to the witness chair; and that she still avoided looking where he sat, but six feet distant, his own eyes resting upon her face with an odd, speculative light in them.