nce of an engagement to
marry, between her and the plaintiff, may have prompted her to concoct a
monstrous fraud for his benefit; and this is suggested although at the
time of the execution of the tattooing no such engagement did, as a
matter of fact, exist, or was within measurable distance of the parties.
It did not exist, said the Attorney-General; but the disposing mind
existed: in other words, that she was then 'in love'--if, notwithstanding
Mr. Attorney's difficulty in defining it, I may use the term with the
plaintiff. This may or may not have been the case. There are some things
which it is quite beyond the power of any Judge or Jury to decide, and
one of them certainly is--at what exact period of her acquaintance with a
future husband a young lady's regard turns into a warmer feeling? But
supposing that the Attorney-General is right, and that although she at
that moment clearly had no prospect of marrying him, since she had left
England to seek her fortune at the Antipodes, the plaintiff was looked
upon by this lady with that kind of regard which is supposed to precede
the matrimonial contract, the circumstance, in my mind, tells rather in
his favour than against him. For in passing I may remark that this young
lady has done a thing which is, in its way, little short of heroic; the
more so because it has a ludicrous side. She has submitted to an
operation which must not only have been painful, but which is and always
will be a blot upon her beauty. I am inclined to agree with the
Attorney-General when he says that she did not make the sacrifice without
a motive, which may have sprung from a keen sense of justice, and of
gratitude to the plaintiff for his interference on her behalf, or from a
warmer feeling. In either case there is nothing discreditable about
it--rather the reverse, in fact; and, taken by itself, there is certainly
nothing here to cause me to disbelieve the evidence of Miss Smithers.

"One question only seems to me to remain. Is there anything to show that
the testator was not, at the time of the execution of the will, of a
sound and disposing mind? and is there anything in his conduct or history
to render the hypothesis of his having executed his will so improbable
that the Court should take the improbability into account? As to the
first point, I can find nothing. Miss Smithers expressly swore that it
was not the case; nor was her statement shaken by a very searching
cross-examination. She admi