As soon as the court had opened on the following morning, Mrs. Peele was called. She looked haughtily askance at the worn Bible as the clerk rattled off the oath, bent her head as would she whiff upon what plebeian lips had touched so often and so evidently, and took the witness chair as were she mounting a throne. She was apparelled in crape. Only her intimate friends could have told whether the backward bend of her head was due to the weight of her veil or the weight of her ancestors. At first she stared at the district attorney with haughty resentment, as, for the benefit of the humble jury, he curtly asked her several direct questions; but remembering that he was “a Sturges,” and also recalling her husband’s admonitions, she unbent, and even condescended to address the jury. Her tale of the night in no wise differed from her husband’s; but her accentuation of Patience’s dark threats and marital deficiencies was all her own. Her suggestion of a lover in the case caused a sudden movement in the jury box, although the stolid faces did not relax. Under cross-examination much of her testimony was as effectually demolished as her husband’s had been.

Two maid servants followed. They testified to violent quarrels between the young couple. Then the butler testified to the reiterant and emphatic command of the prisoner on the day before the death to send to New York for morphine.

The prosecution produced its trump card: the stable boy who had spied upon the interviews between the prisoner and the mysterious lover. The man had evidently been carefully rehearsed—as Bourke later on pointed out to the jury—for his memory of the eight or ten interviews he had witnessed needed little refreshing. His “best recollection” was given glibly and ungrammatically. He dilated upon the young man’s remarkable personal beauty, and observed that it far outshone his beloved Mr. Beverly’s. They had talked principally of books in all but the last two interviews, but had looked perfectly happy. His account of the last two interviews created a profound impression in the court room, even the jury leaning forward slightly. The judge frowned and wheeled his chair sharply when the man gave the gist of the prisoner’s matter-of-fact objection to living with a man who was not her husband.

Mr. Bourke’s rich voice had never rung with deeper indignation and disgust, never shaped itself to more cutting sarcasm than when he made the man see himself and the jury see him as a coward, a cur, a spy, a liar, an eager schemer for an innocent woman’s life. “You felt it your duty,” he concluded, “to spy upon a woman of irreproachable reputation who met a friend in an open wood in broad daylight—Yes, yes,” with all the lingering scornful emphasis which only he could give that simple word. “You never felt yourself a cowardly scoundrel meddling in what was none of your business—No! No!” He turned to the jury with the passion still upon his face, but when he took his seat he smiled encouragingly to his admiring young client.

“Wouldn’t he make an actor?” whispered Simms. “I never saw him do the lofty indignation act with finer effect.”

“Well, he would be a great actor, at least,” retorted Patience, “and I am convinced that you would be a very small one.”

“Just wait,” said Simms, angrily. “I’ve got to talk to this jury about you in a day or two, and if you don’t forget I ever doubted you I’ll eat my hat. The best lawyer’s the best fakir, and a few days from now you’ll see what an ambitious man I am.”

“Miss Rosita Thrailkill,” called the district attorney when the court opened next morning. The audience stood up to a man.

A plump willowy Spanish figure undulated behind the jury box, kissed the Bible reverently, and ascended the witness stand. Rosita was clad in black and yellow, a mantilla in place of a hat, and many diamonds. She looked as pretty and as naughty as possible. As she met Patience’s eyes, she wafted her a kiss, and the prisoner groaned in spirit. She gave her name and birthplace with melodious caressing accent and her marked precision of speech. Yes, the defendant had been her dear friend, her best friend, her only intimate friend. Yes, with unaffected reluctance, Mrs. Sparhawk had been disreputable, and Patience had once attempted her life. Yes, she was the prima donna of light opera known as La Rosita. Did she appear before the public in tights and scant attire? Yes, why not? Had she not had a number of lovers? Objected to and sustained. Flashing indignation of soft Spanish eyes. Did she not have the reputation of being a woman of loose and lawless life? Objected to and sustained. Angry rattle of fan. Was it not in her house that the prisoner was arrested? Yes, it was! and she loved her Patita and would always give her shelter.

When the district attorney sat down with an ugly smile on his thin mouth, Bourke, muttering anathema, rose to his feet.

“Was there ever a whisper against your reputation when you were a school-girl in Monterey and most intimate with the prisoner?”

“No, seÑor!” cried Rosita, paying no attention to the objection. “I was a child, and could not even endure boys.”

“How many times have you seen the defendant since you left Monterey?”

Rosita cast up her eyes, then tapped the sticks of her fan successively as she spoke.

“Once she came to see me just after—ah—WCTU died; then once just before she left Mr. Peele; then that day the ‘Eye’ came out and said she had done this so horrible thing. Ay, dios!”

“She has called upon you three times only, then, since you were children in Monterey, since you have been the Rosita of the public; in the last five years, in short?”

“Si, seÑor—yes, sir.”

“How long did she remain upon her first visit?”

“Oh, only a little while. I told her something that shocked her, for she was always so proper.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Objected to,” cried the district attorney.

“Objection sustained,” snapped the judge.

“How long did she remain on her second visit?”

“About a half hour. I never knew what she came at all for. She just floated in and out.” Rosita waved her arm with enchanting grace.

“Did she tell you why she came the third time?”

“Because she had no other place to go to. She said no hotel would take her in.”

“She said that her old landlady had refused to admit her, did she not?”

“Si, seÑor.”

“Yes, yes!—and that in her terrible extremity she naturally turned to the friend of her childhood?”

“Si!” and Rosita wept.

“But that she should not have gone to your house if there had been any possibility of obtaining entrance to a hotel, or if she had not been turned out of her father-in-law’s house?”

“Ay, yi! yes.”

“That is all. You can go.”

During the rest of that day and the two following days the experts for the prosecution had the stand. The innumerable questions asked by the district attorney, the technical details of the cross-examinations, the constant interruptions, and the minutiÆ of the evidence emptied the court room after the first hour, and even Patience became bored, and fell to thinking of other things, not forgetting to pity those twelve puzzled little heads in the jury box.

The gist of the evidence was that there was enough morphine in Beverly Peele’s stomach to kill two men.