England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Mystery fiction
The evidence of this witness produced a strong sensation among
the audience, and had a marked effect on the minds of the jury.
Cross-examination forced Lady Brydehaven to modify some of her opinions,
and to acknowledge that the hopeless attachment of the prisoner to
another woman was a matter of rumor only. But the facts in her narrative
remained unshaken, and, for that one reason, they invested the crime
charged against the prisoner with an appearance of possibility, which it
had entirely failed to assume during the earlier part of the Trial.
Two other ladies (intimate friends of Mrs. Eustace Macallan) were
called next. They differed from Lady Brydehaven in their opinions on the
propriety of the marriage but on all the material points they supported
her testimony, and confirmed the serious impression which the first
witness had produced on every person in Court.
The next evidence which the prosecution proposed to put in was the
silent evidence of the letters and the Diary found at Gleninch.
In answer to a question from the Bench, the Lord Advocate stated that
the letters were written by friends of the prisoner and his deceased
wife, and that passages in them bore directly on the terms on which the
two associated in their married life. The Diary was still more valuable
as evidence. It contained the prisoner’s daily record of domestic
events, and of the thoughts and feelings which they aroused in him at
the time.
A most painful scene followed this explanation.
Writing, as I do, long after the events took place, I still cannot
prevail upon myself to describe in detail what my unhappy husband said
and did at this distressing period of the Trial. Deeply affected
while Lady Brydehaven was giving her evidence, he had with difficulty
restrained himself from interrupting her. He now lost all control
over his feelings. In piercing tones, which rang through the Court,
he protested against the contemplated violation of his own most sacred
secrets and his wife’s most sacred secrets. “Hang me, innocent as I am!”
he cried, “but spare me _that!_” The effect of this terrible outbreak on
the audience is reported to have been indescribable. Some of the women
present were in hysterics. The Judges interfered from the Bench,
but with no good result. Quiet was at length restored by the Dean of
Faculty, who succeeded in soothing the prisoner, and who then addressed
the Judges, pleading for indulgence to his unhappy client in most
touching and eloquent language. The speech, a masterpiece of impromptu
oratory, concluded with a temperate yet strongly urged protest against
the reading of the papers discovered at Gleninch.
The three Judges retired to consider the legal question submitted to
them. The sitting was suspended for more than half an hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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