The examination of Samuels continued. He described the finding of the body, the attitude in which it lay, the position of the heavy poker with which, according to the theory of the prosecution, the murderous blow was struck--all the harrowing details that had been so often laid before the law. In a faltering voice he narrated the history of the evening: the merry dinner-party, the sound of the lively music upstairs (Minna’s mad tarantella), the angry words he had overheard on coming into his master’s study, the permission to go to bed, his last sight of the prisoner at ten minutes past eleven, his after meeting with Mr. Hart in the bedroom at five minutes to twelve, when the latter had taken the ledger from his bedroom safe and gone downstairs again. Familiar as all these facts were to Irene, every fresh statement put them in a still more terrible light. They seemed to leave Hugh no single avenue for escape. He was hedged round by a pitiless fence of incontrovertible testimony. Once Hugh looked swiftly from the window to her and then back again. The glance appealed to her like that of a noble animal caught in a trap. Yet he bore the ordeal bravely, twirling now and then a disdainful moustache. It was the man’s nature to carry his burdens defiantly. Minna’s appearance in the witness-box the day before had lashed him to a fury of pride. He would rather die a thousand deaths than use her contaminated soul to save his life. At times he looked round the familiar precincts with a smile almost of mockery. The topsy-turvydom of his position contained elements of the grotesque. The central sphere of his life’s ambitions, by some wizard touch, had become the theatre of his shame. The judge before whom he had most often pleaded was now trying him as a murderer. The brother barristers below were cordial acquaintances, linked to him by the honourable traditions of a beloved profession. The scene shimmered before his eyes in whimsical unreality. But then, suddenly, a blaze of associations would disclose, by lurid contrast, the pathos of his ruin. It was terribly real. Once a lump rose in his throat, and he steadied himself by the hand-rail. On the last occasion of his presence in this place, he had delivered an impassioned harangue on behalf of a poor trembling devil of an embezzling clerk, who had clutched at that same hand-rail for support. He remembered how he had wondered at the craven spirit that could thus make public exhibition of its terror. The memory was a whip to his pride.