It would seem that she was speaking of her sister's death.
But her sister had not died that way; her sister had been strangled.
Could this dainty creature, with beauty scarred and yet powerfully triumphant, be the victim of an hallucination as to the cause of that scar and the awesome circumstances which attended its infliction?
Or, harder still to believe, were these soul-compelling tones, these evidences of grief, this pathetic yielding to the rights of the law in face of the heart's natural shrinking from disclosures sacred as they were tragic--were these the medium by which she sought to mislead justice and to conceal truth?
Even I, with my memory of her looks as she faltered down the staircase on that memorable night--pale, staring, her left hand to her cheek and rocking from side to side in pain or terror--could not but ask if this heart-rending story did not involve a still more terrible sequel.

I searched her face, and racked my very soul, in my effort to discern what lay beneath this angelic surface--beneath this recital which if it were true and the whole truth, would call not only for the devotion of a lifetime, but a respect transcending love and elevating it to worship.
But, in her cold and quiet features, I could detect nothing beyond the melancholy of grief; and the suspense from which all suffered, kept me also on the rack, until at a question from Mr.Moffat she spoke again, and we heard her say: "Yes, she died that way, with her hands in mine.

There was no one else by; we were quite alone." That settled it, and for a moment the revulsion of feeling threatened to throw the court into tumult.

But one thing restrained them.

Not the look of astonishment on her face, not the startled uplift of Arthur's head, not the quiet complacency which in an instant replaced the defeated aspect of the district attorney; but the gesture and attitude of Mr.Moffat, the man who had put her on the stand, and who now from the very force of his personality, kept the storm in abeyance, and by his own composure, forced back attention to his witness and to his own confidence in his case.