Thus Minna was restored to the scared and anxious Bebros, who put her to bed and sent for a doctor. The hysteria, on whose brink she had long been trembling, had at last engulfed her, and hour by hour she sank deeper into the abyss, where all the horrors fought for her. But the significance of her foiled errand did not reach her consciousness. And that night, as Gerard slept stertorously by her side, Irene lay throbbingly awake, aching with suspense. The awful peril of the man whom Gerard loved dulled her reminiscence of the strange visit of the hysterical girl. It never crossed her mind that the Lord had delivered her enemy into her hands. CHAPTER XIII It was the second day of the trial. Irene held her husband’s hand in a nervous grasp. They were sitting together among a crowd of well-dressed men and women, many of them friends of Hugh, in the reserved places on the judge’s bench. Yesterday, in her unfamiliarity with the historic court of the Old Bailey, its first aspect had shocked her sense of the fitness of things. She had vaguely imagined a vast hall, stately and imposing paraphernalia, all the pomp and circumstance of the law. But this dingy, murky, incommodious chamber, furnished with just the bare necessities for procedure, and crammed with perspiring men, seemed more like a third-rate auction-room than the most solemn court of justice in the land. It was mean and cramped; even God’s light cut off from it by the eternal, blighting shadow of Newgate. Instead of spacious galleries she had seen little yellow boxes by the roof, above the dock, surmounted by vague agglutinated masses of faces. The nearness of everything to her, consequent upon the small area and great depth of the court, had affected her with a strange feeling of oppression. To-day the surprise had passed; the scene had grown so intensely familiar that she seemed to have borne its burden about her for years, but the feeling of oppression still remained. The nameless atmosphere of the gaol, sullen and hopeless and tainted, hung pall-like over everything.