"Certainly. It has been thrown in my teeth a hundred times."
Little profit had this witness brought to the defendant. Maud Basset, who had been detained out of court since her interruption of the proceedings, was now summoned into the box.
"You are the mother of the late Mrs. Trevethlan, madam?"
"Sure and I am. Of my own Margaret. But I dinna understand it at all."
"You recollect your daughter's marriage, Mrs. Basset?"
"And a proud day was that for me," the old woman replied, "when the squire asked for her to be his wife. But my Margaret was fit to be a queen. Woe's me that he beguiled me, that she should be married only to be murdered."
"You were present at the marriage, I believe, madam?"
"Of course I was. Where else should her mother be? And he all so cold and stately like, and she weeping and crying so. I might have known what would come of it. I saw it all with my own eyes."
"Do you remember the name of the clergyman, Mrs. Basset?"
"Ashton it was—Theodore Ashton. The same as I saw it written at the christening of her child. Woe's me! 'twas the last time almost I saw her."