believe that women in similar circumstances
continue to murder their elderly husbands, and the doctors and
coroners and relations on "his" side tacitly agree not to raise a
fuss in the presence of much graver subjects of apprehension.

I can also understand why these beautiful-women-elderly-husband
cases scarcely starred our Island story prior to the 'fifties of
the last century. It was only when chemical analysis had approached
its present standard of perfection that the presence of the more
subtle poisons could be detected in the stomach and intestines, and
that the young and beautiful wife could be charged with and found
guilty of the deed by the damning evidence of an analytical chemist.

It was Rossiter who secured for David the conduct of Lady Shillito's
defence. Arbella[1] Shillito was his second cousin, a Rossiter by
birth, and would fain have married Michael herself, only that he was
not at that time thinking of marriage, and when his thoughts turned
that way--the very day after, as it were--he met Linda Bennet and
her thousands a year. But he retained a half humorous liking for
this handsome young woman.

[Footnote 1: An old Northumbrian variant of Arabella.]

Arbella, disappointed over Michael--though she was a mere slip of a
girl at the time--next decided that she must marry money. When she
was twenty-one she met Grimthorpe Shillito, an immensely rich man of
Newcastle-on-Tyne, whose foundries poured out big guns and many
other things made of iron and steel combined with acids and brains.
Grimthorpe was a curious-looking person, even at forty; in
appearance a mixture of Julius Caesar, several unpleasant-featured
Doges of Venice, and Voltaire in middle age. His looks were not
entirely his fault and doubtless acquired for him, in his moral
character, a worse definition than he deserved. He had travelled
much in his pursuit of metallurgy and chemistry; at forty he saw
rising before him the prospect of a peerage, due either for his
extraordinary discoveries and inventions in our use of steel, or
easily purchasable out of his immense wealth. What is the good of a
peerage if it ends with your life? He was not without his vanities,
though one of the most cynical men of his cynical period.

He arrived therefore at the decision that he would marry some young
and buxom creature of decent birth and fit in appearance to be a
peeress, and decided on Arbella Rossiter.

After a gulp or two and several _moues_ behi