The evidence went far to sustain the labored and wily exposition of the advocate. The first marriage; the desertion; Andrews’ long residence in New Orleans; his numerous acquaintances, putting inquiry within the easy reach of every one; his visit to the North; his early return accompanied by the defendant, who claimed the privileges and honors of a wife; his disclaimer of her right to such privileges and honors, repeatedly made to his associates; the many hints which the defendant had received from the well disposed and compassionate, as to her true position, early in her marriage; her confused replies, and faint and soon relinquished inquiries; her unwillingness to speak of her family, and studied silence whenever the subject was alluded to; the suspicion which rested upon her mother’s name, and the existence of the first wife, living even at that time, in retirement and sorrow in one of the small towns in the north of France, all was proved by testimony which seemed fair enough. John Cornelius’ eyes glared gloatingly upon the gold already present to their sight, and he turned his hands one within the other, in the joy of the certainty of success. SECTION VII. I opened the defense. I saw a new countenance upon the twelve faces before me. There was now no pity, but distrust and a hardening of the heart, and opinion more than half made up. I walked warily, began afar off; called them honest—and so indeed they were—acknowledged the first marriage, acknowledged the first wife living, in sorrow and in want; acknowledged the plaintiff’s mortgage; claimed nothing from sympathy for the poor, nothing from sympathy for the wronged widow, nothing from sympathy for the orphan; alluded to the thick shadows in which time and circumstances, and a probable wrong, had enveloped the mother’s early life, and with which they had nothing to do; spoke of that mother’s purity of conduct during a period of many years, of her industry, of her accumulation of wealth, of her care for an only child, her daughter and my client; of the daughter’s peculiar position in society; of her young ignorance of the world; of her wide separation from Andrews’ place of residence; of her indiscreet confidence when wooed, pardonable in one whose own life was to her a mystery; of the hints which she had received subsequent to her marriage, and of the suspicions which had been aroused, suspicions well answered and well put to rest by suggestions of the malice of her husband’s enemies, and by trust in the man she loved, in the man into whose arms she had surrendered all—a trust most honorable in a woman. But where was the first wife? Why had she remained silent? Wronged, deserted, driven out, she must have been ready to give credence to any report in disparagement of her husband. Under such circumstances, hints and inuendoes in which the defendant could put no faith, could not satisfy her that she had been deceived. This was the