She was called by the prosecuting counsel, and slowly, gracefully, she entered the witness-box.

There was no doubt that she had felt keenly the tortures which her husband had undergone, and also the humiliation of seeing her name dragged forcibly into this ugly, blackmailing scandal.
"Closely questioned by Mr.Reginald Pepys, she was forced to admit that the man who blackmailed her was connected with her early life in a way which would have brought terrible disgrace upon her and upon her children.

The story she told, amidst many tears and sobs, and much use of her beautiful lace handkerchief and beringed hands, was exceedingly pathetic.
"It appears that when she was barely seventeen she was inveigled into a secret marriage with one of those foreign adventurers who swarm in every country, and who styled himself Comte Armand de la Tremouille.

He seems to have been a blackguard of unusually low pattern, for, after he had extracted from her some L200 of her pin money and a few diamond brooches, he left her one fine day with a laconic word to say that he was sailing for Europe by the _Argentina_, and would not be back for some time.

She was in love with the brute, poor young soul, for when, a week later, she read that the _Argentina_ was wrecked, and presumably every soul on board had perished, she wept very many bitter tears over her early widowhood.
"Fortunately her father, a very wealthy pork-butcher of Chicago, had known nothing of his daughter's culpable foolishness.