As I sat there, scarcely daring to breathe, staring straight in front of me, yet seeing nothing, my thick veil obscuring my features, my hands tightly clasping the knob of my umbrella, I was experiencing the most singular sensation I had ever known.
It was worse than stage fright, by a deal.
CHAPTER XXIX.
[THE TRIAL BEGINS.]
I am not able to describe all that took place. To begin with, everything that happened seemed to me for some time to be happening in a dream. When, afterwards, I read the account in the newspapers, it came to me with all the force of novelty.
The fact was that, for ever so long, it was all I could do to prevent myself from swooning and making a scene and spoiling it all.
It seems funny that, after having gone so much out of my way, and taken all that trouble, I should have been such a goose; but I was.
When I begun to have my wits about me I found that the mean-looking little man who had so keenly eyed Mrs. Tennant was making a speech. Then I understood, not all at once, but by degrees, that he was counsel for the Crown, that he was opening the case for the prosecution, and that, in short, he was Sir Haselton Jardine.
So this was the father of Mr. Townsend's Dora!
Well, if the daughter in any way resembled the father, I could not say much for Mr. Townsend's taste.