and had a verdict in her favor
been rendered, I should certainly have set it aside immediately.

"I cannot but express my severest censure at the result of this cause at
your hands, knowing, as I cannot but know, that the same vile
machinations which have left a hideous trail of this female monster over
every portion of the land, have brought about this disagreement which is
a shame and a disgrace to yourselves, to Genesee County, and this
Court!"

The suit necessarily went over to the next term of court, over which
Judge Williams also presided, when no developments worthy of note
occurred, the same evidence being introduced, the same tactics on the
part of Mrs. Winslow--who, however, had been obliged to secure new
counsel--being attempted, and the same crowd of morbid curiosity-seekers
being in attendance.

But the woman had by this time become too well known for the slightest
hope of success, or even to enable her to receive the ordinary
consideration and protection of the Court.

Without leaving their seats the jury found for the defendant, and the
woman, defeated yet insolent and daring, passed out into the
summer-decked streets of the little city of Batavia a scorned, dreaded
being, driven from everything but infamous memory.

I was never sufficiently interested in Le Compte to trace his future,
but it is safe to say that he never visited "La belle France" and
"Paris, the beautiful, the sublime, the magnificent," in company with
the once fascinating Mrs. Winslow.

Harcout is still the pompous henchman of the harassed millionaire, Mr.
Lyon, and quite covered himself with glory from having claimed the
entire work of securing the evidence that caused the overthrow of the
adventuress.

Were I a novelist, rather than a detective and obliged to relate facts,
I could have made an effective climax by a tragic meeting between
Harcout and Mrs. Winslow, where Lilly Nettleton would have recognized
the Rev. Mr. Bland and wreaked summary vengeance upon him; but, so far
as I am aware, they never met, and the much-named social scourge is now
wearing out an inconceivably vile and wretched old age--the irrevocable
result of her course of life--an outcast and a wanderer among the lowest
classes that people portions of the Pacific Slope cities, with remorse
and wretchedness behind, and utter hopelessness beyond; while Mr. Lyon,
now a feeble old man, who has atoned, through regrets and humiliations,
for his part of the wrong l