him anything, I removed it from the small table where it attracted his attention and put it on the washstand where he could not see it. There I left it. Until Tuesday, May 14, the Tuesday after my husband's death, till a few moments before the terrible charge was made against me, no one in that house had informed me of the fact that a death certificate had been refused--but of course the post-mortem examination had taken place--or that there was any reason to suppose that my husband had died from other than natural causes. It was only when a witness alluded to the presence of arsenic in the meat juice that I was made aware of the nature of the powder my husband had been taking. In conclusion, I only wish to say that for the love of our children, and for the sake of their future, a perfect reconciliation had taken place between us, and on the day before his death I made a full and free confession to him." Mrs. Maybrick's counsel, Sir Charles Russell, made a most brilliant and eloquent appeal in her defence. He pointed out that at the time the black shadow which could never be dispelled passed over the life of the accused woman, her husband was in the habit of drugging himself. She was deposed from her position as mistress of her own home, and pointed out as an object of suspicion. If it had not been for the act of infidelity on her part, there would be no motive assigned in the case, and surely there was a wide chasm between the grave moral guilt of unfaithfulness and the criminal guilt involved in the deliberate plotting by such wicked means of the felonious death of her husband. There were two questions to be answered: Was there clear, safe, and satisfactory equivocal proof, either that death was in fact caused by arsenical poisoning, or that the accused woman administered that poison if to the poison the death of her husband was due? The jury, however, returned a verdict of "Guilty," and Florence Maybrick was sentenced to death. The agitation and excitement throughout the country which followed, ending in a respite being granted and the sentence being commuted to one of penal servitude for life, will be well remembered. Whether Florence Maybrick did actually administer arsenic to her husband _with intent to kill him_, she alone can tell. On her own confession she admitted having given him a certain _white powder_ for which he craved, of the nature of which she said she was ignorant. There can be no doubt _this powder was arsenic_. If she did not know the powder was arsenic, and did not give it with intent to take his life, which many still believe, then surely such a web of circumstantial evidence has never before been woven round one accused of having committed a terrible crime. CHAPTER X ABOUT ACONITE AND HEMLOCK