The Lost Lady of LoneSouthworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
General
The Lost Lady of Lone
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
Fiction
The Duke of Hereward bore the searching glare quite calmly. He simply
leaned back in his chair, with folded arms and attentive face, on which
curiosity was the only expression.
"Mr. Keir," said the venerable Counsellor Guthrie, of the defence, "is
all this supposed to concern the case before the jury?"
"Ay, does it!" cried Rose Cameron, before the lawyer addressed could
reply. "Ay, does it, as ye will sune see, gin ye will gie me leave to
speak."
Meanwhile the Duke of Hereward took out his note-book and wrote these
lines:
"_Pray let the witness proceed without regard to her use of my name.
I think the ends of justice require that she be suffered to give her
testimony in her own way_. HEREWARD."
He tore this leaf out and passed it on to Mr. Guthrie, who read it with
some surprise, and then waved his hand to Mr. Keir, and sat down with the
air of a man who had complied with an indiscreet request, and washed his
hands of the consequences.
"The time of the court is being unnecessarily wasted. Let the examination
of the witness go on," said the presiding judge.
"It shall, my lord," answered the Queen's Counsel, with an inclination of
his white-wigged head. Then turning to the bold blonde on the stand, he
proceeded:
"Witness, tell the jury what occurred that night under the balcony of
Miss Levison's apartments at Castle Lone."
Rose Cameron threw another vindictive glance at the Duke of Hereward, and
commenced her narrative.
Now, as her story was substantially the same that has been already given
to the reader, it is not necessary to recapitulate it here. Only in one
respect it differed from the stories she had hitherto told to her
landlady or housekeeper, Mrs. Brown, of Westminster Road; as on this
occasion she reserved all allusion to any real or fancied marriage
between herself and the nobleman she claimed as her lover, and then
accused as the accomplice of thieves and assassins, in the murder and
robbery at Castle Lone, on the night preceding the day appointed for his
own marriage with its heiress!
It would be impossible to describe the effect of this terrible testimony
on the minds of all who heard it.
The Bench, the Bar, and the Jury, whom, it would seem, nothing in this
world had power to startle, astonish, or discompose, sat like statues.
Scarcely less immovable was the young Duke of Hereward, the subject
of this awful charge, who sat back in his seat with an air of grave
curiosity, and with the composure of a man who was master of the
situation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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