Rush asked her to tell her story in her own way to the jury, and for a time the district attorney permitted her to talk without interruption. Rush had warned her after the interview with the women reporters against delivering herself with too tripping a tongue, and his assistant had spent several hours with her in rehearsal of certain improvements upon a too perfect style. In consequence, she told a clear coherent story, in the simplest manner possible, with little dramatic breaks or hesitations now and again, but with nothing stronger than a quaver in her sweet shallow voice. When she had reached the episode of the filter and had explained to the inquisitive district attorney why she had made no mention at the coroner's inquest of the somewhat complicated episode of which it was the pivot, so to speak, she gave the same credible explanation the newspaper women had already offered to the public; and then, quite unexpectedly, she related the story of Frieda's attempt to blackmail her, and her indignant refusal to give the creature a dollar. Mr. Gore shouted in vain. The Judge ordered him to keep quiet and permitted the defendant to tell the story in her own way. Mrs. Balfame apologised to the jury for relating this incident out of order, and then went on with her quiet plausible story. Her reason for not running out at once was simplicity itself. She must have been in the kitchen when the shot was fired; she had not made a point of regulating her movements by the clock as some of the witnesses for the prosecution appeared to have done, so that she was quite unable to give the jury positive information upon the subject of the exact number of minutes she had remained in the kitchen. She had washed and put away the glass, of course; she was a very methodical woman. Then she had gone upstairs, leisurely, and it was not until she was in her bedroom that she became aware of some sort of excitement out in the Avenue. Even that conveyed nothing to her, for it was Saturday night--she curled her fastidious lip. But when she heard voices directly under her window, inside the grounds, she threw it open at once and asked what had happened. Then of course she ran downstairs and out to her husband. That was all. Even the district attorney was not able to interject a hint of the lemonade story, and so, naturally, she ignored it.