e in opposing the marriage. I thought it at the time what it
has proved to be since--a fatal mistake.

"It would have been sad enough if Mr. Macallan had only married her
without a particle of love on his side. But to make the prospect more
hopeless still, he was at that very time the victim of a misplaced
attachment to a lady who was engaged to another man. I am well aware
that he compassionately denied this, just as he compassionately affected
to be in love with my niece when he married her. But his hopeless
admiration of the lady whom I have mentioned was a matter of fact
notorious among his friends. It may not be amiss to add that _her_
marriage preceded _his_ marriage. He had irretrievably lost the woman
he really loved--he was without a hope or an aspiration in life--when he
took pity on my niece.

"In conclusion, I can only repeat that no evil which could have happened
(if she had remained a single woman) would have been comparable, in
my opinion, to the evil of such a marriage as this. Never, I sincerely
believe, were two more ill-assorted persons united in the bonds of
matrimony than the prisoner at the bar and his deceased wife."

The evidence of this witness produced a strong sensation among
the audience, and had a marked effect on the minds of the jury.
Cross-examination forced Lady Brydehaven to modify some of her opinions,
and to acknowledge that the hopeless attachment of the prisoner to
another woman was a matter of rumor only. But the facts in her narrative
remained unshaken, and, for that one reason, they invested the crime
charged against the prisoner with an appearance of possibility, which it
had entirely failed to assume during the earlier part of the Trial.

Two other ladies (intimate friends of Mrs. Eustace Macallan) were
called next. They differed from Lady Brydehaven in their opinions on the
propriety of the marriage but on all the material points they supported
her testimony, and confirmed the serious impression which the first
witness had produced on every person in Court.

The next evidence which the prosecution proposed to put in was the
silent evidence of the letters and the Diary found at Gleninch.

In answer to a question from the Bench, the Lord Advocate stated that
the letters were written by friends of the prisoner and his deceased
wife, and that passages in them bore directly on the terms on which the
two associated in their married life. The Diary was still more valuable
as ev