dge of Mrs. Farnaby's domestic troubles give you any
reason to apprehend that they might urge her to commit suicide?

"Certainly not," Amelius answered. "When I called on her, on the morning
of her death, I had no apprehension whatever of her committing suicide.
I went to the house as the bearer of good news; and I said so to the
doctor, when he first spoke to me."

The doctor confirmed this. The foreman was silenced, if not convinced.
One of his brother-jurymen, however, feeling the force of example,
interrupted the proceedings, by assailing Amelius with another
question:--"We have heard that you were accompanied by a young lady at
the time you have mentioned, and that you took her upstairs with you. We
want to know what business the young lady had in the house?"

The lawyer interfered again. "I object to that question," he said. "The
purpose of the inquest is to ascertain how Mrs. Farnaby met with her
death. What has the young lady to do with it? The doctor's evidence has
already told us that she was not at the house, until after he had been
called in, and the deadly action of the poison had begun. I appeal,
sir, to the law of evidence, and to you, as the presiding authority, to
enforce it. Mr. Goldenheart, who is acquainted with the circumstances
of the deceased lady's life, has declared on his oath that there was
nothing in those circumstances to inspire him with any apprehension
of her committing suicide. The evidence of the servant at the lodgings
points plainly to the conclusion already arrived at by the medical
witness, that the death was the result of a lamentable mistake, and of
that alone. Is our time to be wasted in irrelevant questions, and are
the feelings of the surviving relatives to be cruelly lacerated to no
purpose, to satisfy the curiosity of strangers?"

A strong expression of approval from the audience followed this. The
lawyer whispered to Mr. Melton, "It's all right!"

Order being restored, the coroner ruled that the juryman's question
was not admissible, and that the servant's evidence, taken with the
statements of the doctor and the chemist, was the only evidence for
the consideration of the jury. Summing up to this effect, he recalled
Amelius, at the request of the foreman, to inquire if the witness knew
anything of the old woman who had been frequently alluded to in the
course of the proceedings. Amelius could answer this question as
honestly as he had answered the questions preceding it.