One of the jury asked a question, not without obvious hesitation. “Then was there never anything of the nature of what they call Words between you and your husband, ma’am?”
“Never.” The word was colourlessly spoken; but everyone felt that a crass misunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a person like Mrs. Manderson had been visited with some severity.
Did she know, the coroner asked, of any other matter which might have been preying upon her husband’s mind recently?
Mrs. Manderson knew of none whatever. The coroner intimated that her ordeal was at an end, and the veiled lady made her way to the door. The general attention, which followed her for a few moments, was now eagerly directed upon Martin, whom the coroner had proceeded to call.
It was at this moment that Trent appeared at the doorway and edged his way into the great room. But he did not look at Martin. He was observing the well-balanced figure that came quickly toward him along an opening path in the crowd, and his eye was gloomy. He started, as he stood aside from the door with a slight bow, to hear Mrs. Manderson address him by name in a low voice. He followed her a pace or two into the hall.
“I wanted to ask you,” she said in a voice now weak and oddly broken, “if you would give me your arm a part of the way to the house. I could not see my uncle near the door, and I suddenly felt rather faint. … I shall be better in the air. … No, no; I cannot stay here—please, Mr. Trent!” she said, as he began to make an obvious suggestion. “I must go to the house.” Her hand tightened momentarily on his arm as if, for all her weakness, she could drag him from the place; then again she leaned heavily upon it, and with that support, and with bent head, she walked slowly from the hotel and along the oak-shaded path toward White Gables.
Trent went in silence, his thoughts whirling, dancing insanely to a chorus of “Fool! fool!” All that he alone knew, all that he guessed and suspected of this affair, rushed through his brain in a rout; but the touch of her unnerved hand upon his arm never for an instant left his consciousness, filling him with an exaltation that enraged and bewildered him. He was still cursing himself furiously behind the mask of conventional solicitude that he turned to the lady when he had attended her to the house and seen her sink upon a couch in the morning-room. Raising her veil, she thanked him gravely and frankly, with a look of sincere gratitude in her eyes. She was much better now, she said, and a cup of tea would work a miracle upon her. She hoped she had not taken him away from anything important. She was ashamed of herself; she thought she could go through with it, but she had not expected those last questions. “I am glad you did not hear me,” she said when he explained. “But of course you will read it all in the reports. It shook me so to have to speak of that,” she added simply; “and to keep from making an exhibition of myself took it out of me. And all those staring men by the door! Thank you again for helping me when I asked you. … I thought I might,” she ended queerly, with a little tired smile; and Trent took himself away, his hand still quivering from the cool touch of her fingers.
The testimony of the servants and of the finder of the body brought nothing new to the reporters’ net. That of the police was as colourless and cryptic as is usual at the inquest stage of affairs of the kind. Greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. Bunner, his evidence afforded the sensation of the day, and threw far into the background the interesting revelation of domestic difficulty made by the dead man’s wife. He told the court in substance what he had already told Trent. The flying pencils did not miss a word of the young American’s story, and it appeared with scarcely the omission of a sentence in every journal of importance in Great Britain and the United States.
Public opinion next day took no note of the faint suggestion of the possibility of suicide which the coroner, in his final address to the jury, had thought it right to make in connection with the lady’s evidence. The weight of evidence, as the official had indeed pointed out, was against such a theory. He had referred with emphasis to the fact that no weapon had been found near the body.
“This question, of course, is all-important, gentlemen,” he had said to the jury. “It is, in fact, the main issue before you. You have seen the body for yourselves. You have just heard the medical evidence; but I think it would be well for me to read you my notes of it in so far as they bear on this point, in order to refresh your memories. Dr. Stock told you—I am going to omit all technical medical language and repeat to you merely the plain English of his testimony—that in his opinion death had
