She rose and walked a few steps closer to the jury, and for the first time during the trial, looked at them steadily.  White as a statue of Purity, she stood for a moment, with her wealth of shining auburn hair coiled low on her shapely head, and waving in soft outlines around her broad full brow.  Unnaturally calm, and wonderfully beautiful in that sublime surrender, which like a halo illumines the myth of Antigone, it was not strange that every heart thrilled, when upon the strained ears of the multitude fell the clear, sweet, indescribably mournful voice.

“When a magnolia blossom or a white camellia just fully open, is snatched by violent hands, bruised, crushed, blackened, scarred by rents, is it worth keeping?  No power can undo the ruin, and since all that made it lovely—­its stainless purity—­is irrevocably destroyed, why preserve it?  Such a pitiable wreck you have made of the young life I am bidden to stand up and defend.  Have you left me anything to live for?  Dragged by constables before prejudiced strangers, accused of awful crimes, denounced as a female monster, herded with convicts, can you imagine any reason why I should struggle to prolong a disgraced, hopelessly ruined existence?  My shrivelled, mutilated life is in your hands, and if you decide to crush it quickly, you will save me much suffering; as when having, perhaps unintentionally, mangled some harmless insect, you mercifully turn back, grind it under your heel, and end its torture.  My life is too wretched now to induce me to defend it, but there is something I hold far dearer, my reputation as an honorable Christian woman; something I deem most sacred of all—­the unsullied purity of the name my father and mother bore.  Because I am innocent of every charge made against me, I owe it to my dead, to lift their honored name out of the mire.  I have pondered the testimony; and the awful mass of circumstances that have combined to accuse me, seems indeed so overwhelming, that as each witness came forward, I have asked myself, am I the victim of some baleful destiny, placed in the grooves of destroying fate-foreordained from the foundations of the world to bear the burden of another’s guilt?  You have been told that I killed Gen’l Darrington, and stole his money and jewels, and destroyed his will, in order to possess his estate.  Trustworthy witnesses have sworn to facts, which I cannot deny, and you believe these facts; and yet, while the snare tightens around my feet, and I believe you intend to condemn me, I stand here, and look you in the face—­as one day we thirteen will surely stand at the final judgment—­and in the name of the God I love, and fear, and trust, I call you each to witness, that I am innocent of every charge in the indictment.  My hands are as unstained, my soul is as unsullied by theft or bloodshed, as your sinless babes cooing in their cradles.