ion or
suppression. With equally good intentions in similar situations many a
woman has seriously injured her cause by slight evasions of the entire
truth, where nevertheless her only purpose has been the natural and
ingenuous one of seeking to save the reputation untainted of a name
which she felt to have been confided to her keeping. The purpose was an
honourable one, but erroneously pursued. Agnes fell into no such error.
She answered calmly, simply, and truly, to every question put by the
magistrates; and beyond _that_ there was little opportunity for her to
speak; the whole business of this preliminary examination being confined
to the deposition of the accuser as to the circumstances under which he
alleged the act of felonious appropriation to have taken place. These
circumstances were perfectly uninteresting, considered in themselves;
but amongst them was one which to us had the most shocking interest,
from the absolute proof thus furnished of a deep-laid plot against
Agnes. But for this one circumstance there would have been a possibility
that the whole had originated in error--error growing out of and acting
upon a nature originally suspicious, and confirmed perhaps by an
unfortunate experience. And in proportion as that was possible, the
chances increased that the accuser might, as the examinations advanced,
and the winning character of the accused party began to develop itself,
begin to see his error, and to retract his own over-hasty suspicions.
But now we saw at a glance that for this hope there was no countenance
whatever, since one solitary circumstance sufficed to establish a
conspiracy. The deposition bore--that the lace had been secreted and
afterwards detected in a muff; now it was a fact as well-known to both
of us as the fact of Agnes having gone out at all--that she had laid
aside her winter's dress for the first time on this genial sunny day.
Muff she had not at the time, nor could have had appropriately from the
style of her costume in other respects. What was the effect upon us of
this remarkable discovery! Of course there died at once the hope of any
abandonment by the prosecutor of his purpose; because here was proof of
a predetermined plot. This hope died at once; but then, as it was one
which never had presented itself to my mind, I lost nothing by which I
had ever been solaced. On the other hand, it will be obvious that a new
hope at the same time arose to take its place, viz., the reasonable