Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/325

310 "I did not know of either until weeks afterward, when Castleton showed me the reports."

"Not know of a sensation that was convulsing all England? Paris is scarcely Kamschatka, my dear Frank. English papers are procurable at the hotels."

"I—I was ill," he said feebly, "or else I was yachting for weeks in the Bay of Biscay. Or both—I don't know!" Even to his sick and bewildered brain his story began to seem rather a lame and unprofitable one. "But my wife," urged the wretched Frank, with a pitiful return of hopefulness, "expressly admitted, when she was examined and cross-examined on her trial, that she had done the deed herself in defense of her life. I have never yet known Fenella, with all her faults, stoop to a direct falsehood. How do you get over that, Lucille?"

"I am a foreigner," was the chilling response, "and, as such, imperfectly acquainted with your criminal procedure. Still, I have always understood that persons indicted for such offenses are not entitled to give evidence in their own defense. I may be wrong."

It should be explained here that Mme. de Vigny was wrong—or partly so. There certainly is some such rule, but it would be strange, indeed, if an advocate of Clitheroe Jacynth's position and influence could not succeed in getting it set aside in favor of his fair client, when, as his legal