hange of scene. The stolen
pearl had been sold to a firm of jewellers, who had recorded the numbers
of the Bank of England notes with which they paid for it. One of these
notes was produced in court, and lo! it was endorsed with the name of
the plaintiff.[3] In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole
edifice of mendacity and perjury fell to pieces. The thief was arrested
and imprisoned; but the peripety for her was less terrible than for her
husband, who had married her in chivalrous faith in her innocence.

Would it have been--or may it some day prove to be--possible to transfer
this "well-made" drama of real life bodily to the stage? I am inclined
to think not. It looks to me very much like one of those "blind alley"
themes of which mention has been made. There is matter, indeed, for most
painful drama in the relations of the husband and wife, both before and
after the trial; but, from the psychological point of view, one can see
nothing in the case but a distressing and inexplicable anomaly.[4] At
the same time, the bare fact of the sudden and tremendous peripety is
irresistibly dramatic; and Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has admitted that it
suggested to him the great scene of the unmasking of Felicia Hindemarsh
in _Mrs. Dane's Defence._

It is instructive to note the delicate adjustment which Mr. Jones found
necessary in order to adapt the theme to dramatic uses. In the first
place, not wishing to plunge into the depths of tragedy, he left the
heroine unmarried, though on the point of marriage. In the second place,
he made the blot on her past, not a theft followed by an attempt to
shift the guilt on to other shoulders, but an error of conduct, due to
youth and inexperience, serious in itself, but rendered disastrous by
tragic consequences over which she, Felicia, had no control. Thus Mr.
Jones raised a real and fairly sufficient obstacle between his lovers,
without rendering his heroine entirely unsympathetic, or presenting her
in the guise of a bewildering moral anomaly. Thirdly, he transferred the
scene of the peripety from a court of justice, with its difficult
adjuncts and tedious procedure, to the private study of a great lawyer.
At the opening of the scene between Mrs. Dane and Sir Daniel Carteret,
she is, no doubt, still anxious and ill-at-ease, but reasonably
confident of having averted all danger of exposure. Sir Daniel, too
(like Sir Charles Russell in the pearl suit), is practically convinced
of her i