plastered hair and a spurious ease of manner, flanked him on the other
side. An undistinguished public filled the rest of the space, and
listened, in an awed silence, to the opening solemnities. The newspaper
men, well used to these, muttered among themselves. Those of them who
knew Trent by sight, assured the rest that he was not in the court.

The identity of the dead man was proved by his wife, the first witness
called, from whom the coroner, after some inquiry into the health and
circumstances of the deceased, proceeded to draw an account of the last
occasion on which she had seen her husband alive. Mrs. Manderson was
taken through her evidence by the coroner with the sympathy which every
man felt for that dark figure of grief. She lifted her thick veil before
beginning to speak, and the extreme paleness and unbroken composure of
the lady produced a singular impression. This was not an impression of
hardness. Interesting femininity was the first thing to be felt in her
presence. She was not even enigmatic. It was only clear that the force
of a powerful character was at work to master the emotions of her
situation. Once or twice as she spoke she touched her eyes with her
handkerchief, but her voice was low and clear to the end.

Her husband, she said, had come up to his bedroom about his usual hour
for retiring on the Sunday night. His room was really a dressing-room
attached to her own bedroom, communicating with it by a door which was
usually kept open during the night. Both dressing-room and bedroom were
entered by other doors giving on the passage. Her husband had always had
a preference for the greatest simplicity in his bedroom arrangements,
and liked to sleep in a small room. She had not been awake when he came
up, but had been half-aroused, as usually happened, when the light was
switched on in her husband's room. She had spoken to him. She had no
clear recollection of what she had said, as she had been very drowsy at
the time; but she had remembered that he had been out for a moonlight
run in the car, and she believed she had asked whether he had had a good
run, and what time it was. She had asked what the time was because she
felt as if she had only been a very short time asleep, and she had
expected her husband to be out very late. In answer to her question he
had told her it was half-past eleven, and had gone on to say that he had
changed his mind about going for a run.

"Did he say why?" the coroner a