self as compared with the second and third of the
women's letters, the conclusion still pointed the same way. The life of
the husband at Gleninch appeared to be just as intolerable as the life
of the wife.

For example, one of the prisoner's male friends wrote inviting him to
make a yacht voyage around the world. Another suggested an absence
of six months on the Continent. A third recommended field-sports and
fishing. The one object aimed at by all the writers was plainly to
counsel a separation, more or less plausible and more or less complete,
between the married pair.

The last letter read was addressed to the prisoner in a woman's
handwriting, and was signed by a woman's Christian name only.

"Ah, my poor Eustace, what a cruel destiny is ours!" the letter began.
"When I think of your life, sacrificed to that wretched woman, my heart
bleeds for you. If _we_ had been man and wife--if it had been _my_
unutterable happiness to love and cherish the best, the dearest of
men--what a paradise of our own we might have lived in! what delicious
hours we might have known! But regret is vain; we are separated in this
life--separated by ties which we both mourn, and yet which we must both
respect. My Eustace, there is a world beyond this. There our souls will
fly to meet each other, and mingle in one long heavenly embrace--in
a rapture forbidden to us on earth. The misery described in your
letter--oh, why, why did you marry her?--has wrung this confession of
feeling from me. Let it comfort you, but let no other eyes see it. Burn
my rashly written lines, and look (as I look) to the better life which
you may yet share with your own

"HELENA."

The reading of this outrageous letter provoked a question from the
Bench. One of the Judges asked if the writer had attached any date or
address to her letter.

In answer to this the Lord Advocate stated that neither the one nor the
other appeared. The envelope showed that the letter had been posted in
London. "We propose," the learned counsel continued, "to read certain
passages from the prisoner's Diary, in which the name signed at the
end of the letter occurs more than once; and we may possibly find other
means of identifying the writer, to the satisfaction of your lordships,
before the Trial is over."

The promised passages from my husband's private Diary were now read. The
first extract related to a period of nearly a year before the date of
Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death. It w