with difficulty, in a passion of loathing and terror, and rushed in-doors, where she found Lady Wing in the gallery of the old house, on the first floor, walking up and down in a jealous fury.  Juliet Sparling burst in upon her with the reproaches of a woman driven to bay, threatening to go at once to her husband and make a clean breast of the whole history of their miserable acquaintance.  She was practically beside herself—­already, as the sequel showed, mortally ill, worn out by remorse and sleeplessness, and quivering under the insult which had been offered her.  Lady Wing recovered her own self-possession under the stimulus of Juliet’s breakdown.  She taunted her in the cruelest way, accused her of being the temptress in the case of Sir Francis, and of simulating a hypocritical indignation in order to save herself with her husband, and finally charged her with the robbery of her sister’s money, declaring that as soon as daylight came she would take steps to set the criminal law in motion, and so protect both herself and her husband from any charge such a woman might bring against them.  The threat, of course, was mere bluff.  But Mrs. Sparling, in her frenzy and her ignorance, took it for truth.  Finally, the fierce creature came up to her, snatching at a brooch in the bosom of her dress, and crying out in the vilest language that it was Sir Francis’s gift.  Juliet, pushed up against the panelling of the gallery, caught at a dagger belonging to a trophy of Eastern arms displayed on the wall, close to her hand, and struck wildly at her tormentor.  The dagger pierced Lady Wing’s left breast—­she was in evening dress and decolletee; it penetrated to the heart, and she fell dead at Juliet’s feet as her husband entered the gallery.  Juliet dropped the dagger; and as Sir Francis rushed to his wife, she fled shrieking up the stairs—­her white dress covered with blood—­to her own room, falling unconscious before she reached it.  She was carried to her room by the servants—­the police were sent for—­and the rest—­or most of the rest—­you know.”

Sir James ceased speaking.  A heavy silence possessed the room.

Sir James walked quickly up to his companion.

“Now I ask you to notice two points in the story as I have told it.  My cross-examination of Wing served its purpose as an exposure of the man—­except in one direction.  He swore that Mrs. Sparling had made dishonorable advances to him, and had finally become his mistress, in order to buy his silence on the trust money and the continuance of his financial help.  On the other hand, the case for the defence was that—­as I have stated—­it was in the maddened state of feeling, provoked by his attack upon her honor, and made intolerable by the wife’s taunts and threats, that Juliet Sparling struck the fatal blow.  At the trial the judge believed me; the jury—­and a large part of the public—­you, I have no doubt among them—­believed Wing.  The jury were probably influenced by some of the evidence given by the fellow-guests in the house, which seemed to me simply to amount to this—­that a woman in the strait in which Juliet Sparling was will endeavor, out of mortal fear, to keep the ruffian who has her in his power in a good-humor.”