"About half-past one o'clock," says the reporter, "the Countess of Landsfeld, leaning on the arm of Mr. Heald, her present husband, came into court, and was accommodated with a seat in front of the bar. Mr. Heald was also allowed to have a chair beside her. The lady appeared quite unembarrassed, and smiled several times as she made remarks to her husband. She was stated to be 24 years of age on the police-sheet, but has the look of a woman of at least 30. [She was, in fact, 31.] She was dressed in black silk, with close fitting black velvet jacket, a plain white straw bonnet trimmed with blue, and blue veil. In figure she is rather plump, and of middle height, of pale dark complexion, the lower part of the features symmetrical, the upper part not so good, owing to rather prominent cheek bones, but set off by a pair of unusually large blue eyes with long black lashes. Her reputed husband, Mr. Heald, during the whole of the proceedings, sat with the countess's hand clasped in both of his own, occasionally giving it a fervent squeeze, and at particular parts of the evidence whispering to her with the fondest air, and pressing her hand to his lips with juvenile warmth."[22] The magistrate, Mr. Peregrine Bingham, having taken his seat, Mr. Clarkson opened the case for the prosecution. "Sir," he began, "however painful the circumstances under which the lady who sits at my left (Miss Heald) is placed, she has felt it to be a duty to her deceased brother, the father of the young gentleman now in court, to lay before you the evidence of this young gentleman's marriage with the lady at the bar, and also other evidence which has led her to impute the offence of bigamy to that lady." The learned counsel then went on to state that Lola had been married to Thomas James in Ireland, in July 1837, that a divorce only a _toro et mensa_ (_i.e._, a judicial separation) had been pronounced by the Consistory Court in 1842, and that Captain James was alive in India thirty-six days before the celebration of the second marriage with Heald. He deprecated any sort of allusion to the defendant's distinction or notoriety, concluding: "I am further bound to state that this proceeding is on the part of the aunt, Miss Heald, without the consent of Mr. Heald, her nephew, who would, no doubt, if he could, prevent these proceedings from being carried on. No one, I think, will venture to impugn the motives or the purity of the intentions of Miss Heald in taking this step. My application is for the lady at the bar to be remanded till we can get the proper witnesses from India to come forward."