l
grounds. A small course of gentle legal medicine, if you love us, and
then we shall feel perfectly easy on the subject to the end of our
days."

"Don't joke about it!" cried his father. "Don't, don't, don't, Jemmy!
Did they try her again? They couldn't! They durs'n't! Nobody can be tried
twice over for the same offense."

"Pooh! pooh! she could be tried a second time for a second offense,"
retorted Bashwood the younger--"and tried she was. Luckily for the
pacification of the public mind, she had rushed headlong into redressing
her own grievances (as women will), when she discovered that her husband
had cut her down from a legacy of fifty thousand pounds to a legacy
of five thousand by a stroke of his pen. The day before the inquest a
locked drawer in Mr. Waldron's dressing-room table, which contained some
valuable jewelry, was discovered to have been opened and emptied; and
when the prisoner was committed by the magistrates, the precious stones
were found torn out of their settings and sewed up in her stays. The
lady considered it a case of justifiable self-compensation. The law
declared it to be a robbery committed on the executors of the dead man.
The lighter offense--which had been passed over when such a charge as
murder was brought against her--was just the thing to revive, to save
appearances in the eyes of the public. They had stopped the course of
justice, in the case of the prisoner, at one trial; and now all they
wanted was to set the course of justice going again, in the case of the
prisoner, at another! She was arraigned for the robbery, after having
been pardoned for the murder. And, what is more, if her beauty and her
misfortunes hadn't made a strong impression on her lawyer, she would not
only have had to stand another trial, but would have had even the five
thousand pounds, to which she was entitled by the second will, taken
away from her, as a felon, by the Crown."

"I respect her lawyer! I admire her lawyer!" exclaimed Mr. Bashwood. "I
should like to take his hand, and tell him so."

"He wouldn't thank you, if you did," remarked Bashwood the younger. "He
is under a comfortable impression that nobody knows how he saved Mrs.
Waldron's legacy for her but himself."

"I beg your pardon, Jemmy," interposed his father. "But don't call her
Mrs. Waldron. Speak of her, please, by her name when she was innocent,
and young, and a girl at school. Would you mind, for my sake, calling
her Miss Gwilt?"

"Not