popular and picturesque aspect, were ready with
their note-books, as the artists with their
sketch-books. The ushers were in their places,
ready to enforce silence.

In another moment it was proclaimed aloud,
and, a small door on the dais at the upper end of
the hall being opened, the judges came into
court.

There were two of them. One—it was he who
entered first—was a very old man of a most noble
and worshipful appearance, such as one seldom
sees. He was of somewhat tall stature, and
inclining to be thin; but his figure was still good,
and his judge's robes fell gracefully and nobly
about him. His face was very pale and full of lines,
which seemed all to tell of thoughtfulness and
gravity. The features were as entirely delicate
in formation as they could be without incurring
any charge of effeminacy, from which, indeed,
they were entirely free, as they were from all
approach to weakness; indeed, the under-jaw
was remarkably prominent, and with the keen
piercing eyes made the face to be one full of
magnificent power. It was a countenance which
had been long in arriving at so much of perfectness.
It had taken upwards of seventy years to
build it up to what it was now. The office of a
judge is perhaps the most god-like function which
man has to fulfil upon this earth, and this one was
the beau-ideal of what a judge should be.

His companion on the bench was a gentleman
in the very prime of life, who had reached this
high position at a much earlier period than is at
all usual by the exercise of rare abilities combined
with indefatigable industry and perseverance.
The old judge and the young judge sat side by
side, and there was that in their appearance
which gave a very guarantee that entire justice
should be done to any who might come that day
before them. They had only just taken their seats,
and the hum of conversation caused by their
entrance had only just subsided, when a new
sensation seemed to run as by one consent
through the whole vast assembly, and all eyes,
turning simultaneously in one direction, saw that
a certain space which had hitherto remained
vacant in that crowded court was filled up, and
that the prisoner was placed at the bar.

They put a chair for her in the dock; and this,
indeed, was necessary, for her knees trembled so
under her, that it would have been impossible for
her to stand. She sat there quite quietly, with
her hands joined together and lying in her lap,
and her head bent forwards. There was not
much to gratify public curiosity. She wore her
usual quiet out-door costume, and her veil was
drawn down over her face. But it was a pathetic
little figure in that big place, and with such
an array drawn out against her. It was a
terrible ordeal, and to have all those eyes fixed on
her alone was enough to have daunted a stronger
woman than this. But this was not all. Those
eyes were fixed upon her because she was the
central figure of a drama of surpassing and
dreadful interest—because her young life was in
danger, and hung upon the issue of the investigation
which was now beginning. The reader
must not blame this woman for being a woman,
nor think the worse of her, because she does not
come forward boldly to assert her innocence by
looking her accusers and the world in general
proudly in the face.

When the trial actually commenced, Gabrielle
tried to stand, but it was entirely impossible at
present, and she was compelled to seat herself
again just as she was before. Once she raised
her head; it was to look for her husband's face,
but she could not make him out in the crowd of
barristers, and was obliged to give it up. She
had seen, however, in that brief glance the figure
of the old judge, and had observed that his
countenance, as he looked on her, was full of
concern and pity; and from that moment she felt
a greater degree of calmness, and a strange
feeling of support and hope.

It is probable that on this great and terrible
occasion all that took place was to her dim and
unreal, that much passed which escaped her
altogether, and that there was a strange indistinctness
about what she saw and what she heard.
The habitués of the Old Bailey eat and sleep
pretty tolerably when their lives are in danger;
but this poor lady had not been able to do either,
and she was miserably weak and exhausted.
The habitués, too, are calm and collected when
on their trials. It was not so with Gabrielle.

Even the horrible words of the indictment, as
the officer of the court read them out, lost some
of their terror to her by reason of this semi-
stupor which was upon her. She hardly heard
the accusation that she did, on a certain day in
January last, kill and slay one Diana Carrington,
by administering to her a certain poisonous
drug, called laudanum, in sufficient quantity to
destroy life, or, hearing, realised but faintly what
the accusation meant.

And now the jurymen have settled themselves
in their places as men do who are powerfully
interested in the scene before them. There is the
customary amount of whispering going on among
them. There is the usual obstinate and
thickheaded-looking individual there who is never
absent, any more than the fussy man who sees
a great many things which escape other people,
and which, indeed, have no existence except in
his own imagination. He is the same man who
takes notes so ostentatiously, and who asks ques-
tions simply for the sake of showing his own
cleverness.

And now the counsel for the prosecution got
up in his place, and proceeded to draw the attention
of these men to his view of the facts of the
case. He was a shrewd, careful man, and
seemed disposed to make the very most of the
terribly strong evidence at his disposal.

"1 find," he said, after a few preliminary
words, in which he adverted to the great
peculiarity of the case, and entreated the jury not to
let any feeling of interest in the prisoner, or
sympathy for her terrible and almost unexampled