She shook her head. She would sit through it to the end. Never had she felt such fierce contempt for her sex’s weakness as then. It was maddening to feel her nerve yielding and her brain growing dizzy. Was she going to follow the example of the shallow, hysterical girl of last night? Were all women constituted alike--to snap like lath at the first serious strain? The thought was abhorrent. For over an hour she sat there scarcely heeding the proceedings, her whole mind concentrated upon the efforts to retain her consciousness. And during this hour Mrs. Parsons had stated that she had found among the prisoner’s linen a sleeping suit which had been missing for some time, and Israel Hart’s confidential clerk had sworn to the valueless nature of the £5,000 security. The endless cross-fire of question and answer drew to a conclusion. The charge was read, and the counsel for the prosecution submitted his case to the judge. Gardiner rose. Irene with a great effort regained her self-control, and regarded him anxiously. “I call no witnesses for the defence, my lord,” said he. Irene, aghast, uttered a sharp cry of pain and dismay. To her mind, unversed in legal methods, this proceeding seemed like capitulation. Was Gardiner going to make no show of fight for his friend’s life? She questioned her husband in a fever of anxiety. “He is relying on his speech to-morrow to devaluate the evidence. What witnesses can he bring forward?” But Irene was not reassured. She lay back, with white lips and panting bosom. The halter was already round Hugh’s neck. To her strained eyes his features seemed to have undergone an awful change since the morning. Her vision invested him with imaginary haggardness and deathlike pallor. Again she felt faint and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the attorney-general was addressing the jury. Now he had more scope for emotion than in his opening. He spoke of the prisoner’s position as a barrister, of the terrible pain it had been to him to lead this prosecution. (All the unreasoning feminine in Irene blazed into inward reproach. It was hypocrisy, baseness, a hireling’s part. No noble or generous nature could have undertaken the task.) He spoke of duty, of the law, of the necessity of sacrificing private feelings to the interests of justice. And justice compelled him to point out the prisoner as a man guilty of a terrible crime. He proceeded to the evidence, recapitulated the details. Constructed a romance of evil passions. Drew a picture of the imaginary scene, the quarrel over the £5,000, the insulting word, the dastardly and fatal blow. Hugh, leaning over the railing of the dock, gazed at him intently, with set teeth. Throughout all the sordid commonplaces of the trial, he had maintained his bearing of scorn. But now the touch of a lurid eloquence gripped his nature. His breath came hard and fast, in speechless indignation and horror at the vivid fable.