f this question was too marked to pass unchallenged.
Not a man in that room, myself included, but frowned with sudden
disapprobation. But Mary Leavenworth, drawing herself up, looked her
interlocutor calmly in the face, and restrained herself to say:

"I know who would be the greatest losers by it. The children he took to
his bosom in their helplessness and sorrow; the young girls he enshrined
with the halo of his love and protection, when love and protection were
what their immaturity most demanded; the women who looked to him for
guidance when childhood and youth were passed--these, sir, these are
the ones to whom his death is a loss, in comparison to which all others
which may hereafter befall them must ever seem trivial and unimportant."

It was a noble reply to the basest of insinuations, and the juryman drew
back rebuked; but here another of them, one who had not spoken before,
but whose appearance was not only superior to the rest, but also almost
imposing in its gravity, leaned from his seat and in a solemn voice
said:

"Miss Leavenworth, the human mind cannot help forming impressions.
Now have you, with or without reason, felt at any time conscious of
a suspicion pointing towards any one person as the murderer of your
uncle?"

It was a frightful moment. To me and to one other, I am sure it was
not only frightful, but agonizing. Would her courage fail? would her
determination to shield her cousin remain firm in the face of duty and
at the call of probity? I dared not hope it.

But Mary Leavenworth, rising to her feet, looked judge and jury calmly
in the face, and, without raising her voice, giving it an indescribably
clear and sharp intonation, replied:

"No; I have neither suspicion nor reason for any. The assassin of my
uncle is not only entirely unknown to, but completely unsuspected by,
me."

It was like the removal of a stifling pressure. Amid a universal
outgoing of the breath, Mary Leavenworth stood aside and Eleanore was
called in her place.

VIII. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

"O dark, dark, dark!"

AND now that the interest was at its height, that the veil which
shrouded this horrible tragedy seemed about to be lifted, if not
entirely withdrawn, I felt a desire to fly the scene, to leave the spot,
to know no more. Not that I was conscious of any particular fear of
this woman betraying herself. The cold steadiness of her now fixed and
impassive countenance was sufficient warranty in it