Paxton-Smith, as the tense moments flew by, felt full of admiration for his beautiful client.
Ivy even remembered everything that he had advised with regard to her behaviour when in the witness-box, including certain things she might well have been pardoned for forgetting. One of these had been that, when answering counsel for the Crown, she should hold her head well up.
This she obviously tried to do, and when, as more than once happened, she threw what looked like a childlike glance of fear and supplication at the kind, if grave, face of the inquisitor whose only desire was to learn the truth and nothing but the truth, a thrill of sympathy went through her great, silent audience.
Again, when the flawless oval of her face appeared framed in the tiny little pull-on black hat, and her starlike eyes for a moment looked wild, many a man, watching her, told himself that he could well understand, indeed almost sympathise with, any crime being committed by one who loved her, and who longed, as only lovers long, to have the exquisite creature standing there at bay entirely his own.
But one curious thing was observed by those who note such things. This was that not once did Ivy Lexton glance at the prisoner in the dock, during the long examination-in-chief.
As for Gretorex, he on his side crossed his arms and stared straight before him as if with unseeing eyes, during the whole of the time the woman he had loved with so devoted and trusting a love, remained in the witness-box.
Sir Jonathan Wright, the leading counsel for the Crown, to whom fate had assigned Ivy Lexton as his principal witness, was very gentle with her, moved, no doubt, by her evident, shrinking fear. But all those present in Court were struck by the clear way she answered the questions concerning her early married life, the loss of Jervis’s fortune, and his final, successful, effort, to find work.
It was not until she was questioned as to her relations—her “friendship,” as counsel put it—with the prisoner that Ivy’s voice for the first time became inaudible, and that the Judge had to admonish her to speak louder.
But at once she responded with pathetic submission to the flick of the whip.
“I am sorry to have to press the question, Mrs. Lexton”—and the distinguished man on whom had fallen the, to him, painful duty of conducting the prosecution did feel really sorry for this lovely, pathetic-looking, young creature—“but I put to you, and most solemnly, the question: What were your real relations to and with Dr. Gretorex?”
“We were great friends. All three of us were great friends. My husband, too,” she answered, in a tone which, if clear, yet quivered with pain.
“Were your husband and Dr. Gretorex friends before you ever met Dr. Gretorex?”
Then came a whispered, “I don’t know.”
“Eh, what?”
The Judge, Mr. Justice Mayhew, was old, but none the less keen and clear as regarded his mind, though he was slightly deaf.
“She does not know, my lord,” said Sir Jonathan emphatically.
Then he turned back to his witness.
“Do you think they were already acquainted?”
“I really don’t know.” And then, perhaps because she saw she was creating a less good impression than had been the case with regard to her other answers, “I think not,” she said firmly.
As the examination went on, it became clear that Ivy Lexton was painfully anxious to say all that was good of Roger Gretorex. More than once she managed to bring into one of her answers to a short question the fact that he had been kind to her—very, very kind.
And those who listened breathlessly to Ivy’s artless story of how the prisoner in the dock had come to love her, were moved by her apparent surprise and gratitude that he should have been “so kind” to her.
With quivering lips, again and again, in no wise checked by the man who was taking her, step by step, through the story of these last few months, she said a good word for the now tragic lover with whom she had been on those terms—peculiar, and yet how usual nowadays—when a beautiful young married woman, while enchanted to take all she can from a man, will yet give nothing in exchange.
And with every word she uttered, with every apparently spontaneous admission, Ivy threw a secret thought over the sea to Miles Rushworth, and of what he would think tomorrow of what she said, and left unsaid, today.
How strangely drawn out appeared that first portion of her ordeal, to Ivy herself, and to the man now on trial for his life! Not so to those who listened, with ever-increasing curiosity and excitement, to her admissions, omissions, and equivocations.
But it was generally agreed that, as a matter of fact, the murdered man’s wife had very little to reveal, after all. Even the most mindless and stupid of those present knew that the jury only had to look at her, standing there in the witness-box, and then to look at the prisoner in the dock, to know what must have been that young man’s motive for the crime of which he stood accused.
Ivy was so helpless-looking, so fragile, so appealing, as well as so exceedingly lovely. She seemed, indeed, to some of those watching her, like some poor little delicate furry creature caught in a cruel steel trap.
Had she flirted dangerously, heartlessly, with Roger Gretorex? Even that seemed doubtful to some of those listening to her low-toned replies to counsel for the Crown.
There were women now watching her intently who had come into Court that day with the strongest prejudice against Ivy Lexton. Yet they were conquered by what appeared to be her effortless, youthful charm, as also by her evident suffering. And then her many pitiful little efforts to say the best
