She was not to know that the pallor which gave him so interesting an air, and the dark stains which lent his eyes that gentle wistfulness, were the advertisements at once of the debauch that had kept him from his bed until after two o'clock that morning and of the inexorable disease that slowly gnawed away his life and enraged him out of all humanity.
And the confidence his gentle countenance inspired was confirmed by the first words he had occasion to address to her. She had interrupted counsel to the Crown when, in his opening address to the jury—composed of some of the most considerable gentlemen of Hampshire—he seemed to imply that she had been in sympathy with Monmouth's cause. She was, of course, without counsel, and must look herself to her defence.
“My lord,” she cried, “I abhorred that rebellion as much as any woman in the world!”
Jeffreys leaned forward with a restraining gesture.
“Look you, Mrs. Lisle,” he admonished her sweetly, “because we must observe the common and usual methods of trial in your case I must interrupt you now.” And upon that he promised that she should be fully heard in her own defence at the proper time, and that himself he would instruct her in the forms of law to her advantage. He reassured her by reverent allusions to the great Judge of Heaven and Earth, in whose sight they stood, that she should have justice. “And as to what you say concerning yourself,” he concluded, “I pray God with all my heart you may be innocent.”
He was benign and reassuring. But she had the first taste of his true quality in the examination of Dunne—a most unwilling witness.
Reluctantly, under the pressure put upon him, did Dunne yield up the tale of how he had conducted the two absconders to my lady's house with her consent, and it was sought to prove that she was aware of their connection with the rebellion. The stubbornly evasive Dunne was asked at last:
“Do you believe that she knew Mr. Hicks before?”
He returned the answer that already he had returned to many questions of the sort.
“I cannot tell truly.”