“Was this neighbor a young man?”

“Hardly more than a boy,” said Rachel, “and as friendless as ourselves.”

“Was your husband jealous of him?”

“I had no idea of it until that night.”

“Did you find it out then?”

“I did, indeed!”

“And where had your husband been spending the evening?”

“I had no idea of that either—­until he told me he had been watching the house—­and why!”

Though the man was dead, she could not rid her voice of its scorn; and presently, with bowed head, she was repeating his last words to her.  A cold thrill ran through the court.

“And was that the last time you saw him alive?” inquired counsel, his face lightening in ready apprehension of the thrill, and his assurance coming back to him on the spot, as though it were he who had insisted on putting his client in the box.

But to this there was no immediate answer; for it was here that the white-haired man raised his hand to his ear; and the event was exactly as he seemed to have anticipated.

“Was that the last time you saw your husband alive?” repeated Rachel’s counsel, in the winning accents and with the reassuring face that he could assume without an effort at his will.

“It was,” said Rachel, after yet another moment’s thought.

It was then that the white-headed man dropped his eyes for once; and for once the thin, hard lines of his mouth relaxed in a smile that seemed to epitomize all the evil that was in his face, and to give it forth in one sudden sour quintessence.

CHAPTER III

NAME AND NATURE

The prisoner’s evidence concluded with a perfectly simple if somewhat hesitating account of her own doings during the remainder of the night of her husband’s murder.  That story has already been told in greater detail than could be extracted even by the urbane but deadly cross-examiner who led for the Crown.  A change had come over the manner in which Rachel was giving her evidence; it was as though her strength and nerve were failing her together, and henceforth the words had to be put into her mouth.  Curiously enough, the change in Mrs. Minchin’s demeanor was almost coincident with the single and rather sinister display of feeling upon the part of the white-haired gentleman who had followed every word of the case.  On the whole, however, her story bore the stamp of truth; and a half-apologetic but none the less persistent cross-examination left it scarcely less convincing than before.