;
incandescent burners revealed unsuspected brackets; the place was warmed
and lighted for the first time during the week. And the effect of the
light and warmth was on all the faces that rose as one while the judge
sidled from the bench, and the jury filed out of their box, and the
prisoner disappeared down the dock stairs for the last time in ignorance
of her fate. Next moment there was the buzz of talk that you expect in a
theatre between the acts, rather than in a court of justice at the
solemn crisis of a solemn trial. It was like a class-room with the
master called away. Hats were put on again in the bulging galleries;
hardly a tongue was still. On the bench a red-robed magnate and another
in knee-breeches exchanged views upon the enlarged photographs which had
played so prominent a part in the case; in the well the barristers' wigs
nodded or shook over their pink blotters and their quill pens; gentlemen
of the Press sharpened their pencils and indulged in prophecy; and on
their right, between the reporters and the bench, the privileged few,
the literary and theatrical elect, discussed the situation with abnormal
callousness, masking emotion with a childlike cynicism of sentiment and
phrase.

And for once the stranger in their midst, the man with more outward
distinction than any one of them, the unknown man with the snowy hair,
could afford to listen to what they had to say.

"No chance, my dear man. Not an earthly!"

"I'm not so sure of that."

"Will you bet?"

"No, hang it! What a beast you are! But I thought the woman was speaking
the truth."

"You heard what the judge said. Where's your corroboration? No, they
ought never to have let her go into the box. I hear she insisted. But it
hasn't saved anybody yet."

"The new law? Then it shows her pluck!"

"But not necessarily her innocence, dear boy."

Thus one shaven couple. Others had already exhausted the subject.

"Yes, I finished it down at Westgate last week."

"Satisfied?"

"In a way. It depends so much on the cast."

"These actor-managers--what?"

"More or less. I must be off. Dining out."

"What! Not going to wait for the end of the fourth act?"

"No, I'm late as it is. Ta-ta!"

The white-haired man was amused. He did not turn round, nor, if he had,
would he have known the retreating gentleman for the most eminent of
living playwrights; but he knew the reason for his sudden retreat. A
hush had fallen, and some one had whispered, "The