Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/144

 later, though rambling and practically valueless, did more.

Major Smedley had his chance to give evidence, at last, and got himself thoroughly disliked by every one present for trying (or apparently trying) to damage the character of Sir Ian Hereward. He said that he was an old friend of the Latham family, that he had known Lady Hereward before her marriage, and her husband both before and afterward, "more or less well," and that there was a "mystery about their coming together." Her people had never thought that he loved her. There was some other reason for the marriage. Sir Ian (then Captain) Hereward had had at least one desperate love affair in India, just before his sudden engagement to his distant cousin, Miss Latham; and people who had known him before he was ordered home to England said that he had never been the same man since. Altogether, if Miss Ricardo were right in believing that Major Smedley had a bone to pick with Sir Ian Hereward, he certainly picked it clean. To all appearances, he produced little or no impression on the minds of the jury, but such insinuations as he made under cloak of answering straightforward questions, could not easily be forgotten, especially when repeated far and wide in the newspapers.

Miss Verney, pale as if she were ready for her coffin (like her dead mistress upstairs), but exceedingly lovely to look upon, denied on oath that she had gone out to