“Beryl Brentano, you are charged with the murder of Robert Luke Darrington, by striking him with a brass andiron.  Are you guilty, or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”  Her voice was unsteady, but the words were distinct.

Mr. Dunbar, Mr. Burk, and a middle-aged woman lean as Cassius, came nearer to the platform, and after a leisurely survey of the girl’s face and figure, pronounced her the person whom they had severally accused of the crime of causing the death of General Darrington.

The canons that govern psychical phenomena are as occult as the abstraction of the “fourth division of space”; and they defy the realism of common-place probability, mock all analysis, and annihilate distance.  When Beryl had first met the keen scrutiny of Mr. Dunbar’s glittering blue eyes, their baleful influence made her shiver slightly; and now at the instant in which he approached, and inspected her closely, she forgot that she was on trial for her life, became temporarily oblivious of her dismal entourage, and stood once more before a marble image in the Vatican, where the light streamed full on the cold face, that for centuries has been the synonym of blended beauty and cruelty.  In her ears rang again the words her father had rend aloud at her side, while she sketched:  “But he does not inspire confidence, by the smile that would like to express goodness.  The finely cut underlip that rises from the strongly marked hollow over the chin ought to sharpen with a dash of contempt the conscious superiority that lies upon his broad, magnificent forehead.  His smile is in strong contrast with the cold gaze of the large open eyes; a gaze that hesitates not, but without mercy verifies a judgment fixed in advance, that gives up every one to condemnation.”

The dusty crowded court-room appeared to swim in the rich aroma distilled from the creamy hearts of Roman hyacinths; and the velvet lips of purple Roman violets suddenly babbled out the secret of the mysterious repulsion which had puzzled her, from the hour in which she first looked into Mr. Dunbar’s face; his strange resemblance to the Chiaramonti Tiberius, which she had studied and copied so carefully.  In days gone by, the subtle repose, the marvelous beauty of that marble face, where as yet the demon of destruction had cast no stain, possessed a singular fascination for her; and now the haunting likeness which had perplexed her at Elm Bluff, became associated inseparably with old Bedney’s description of Mr. Dunbar’s merciless treatment of witnesses, and Beryl realized with alarming clearness that in her grandfather’s lawyer she had met the incarnation of her cruel fate.