Horror and pity were alike weary; the brain asserted itself.
The court was packed.

Aldous Raeburn sat on Marcella's right hand; and during the day the attention of everybody in the dingy building had been largely divided between the scene below, and that strange group in the gallery where the man who had just been elected Conservative member for East Brookshire, who was Lord Maxwell's heir, and Westall's employer, sat beside his betrothed, in charge of a party which comprised not only Marcella Boyce, but the wife, sister, and little girl of Westall's murderer.
On one occasion some blunt answer of a witness had provoked a laugh coming no one knew whence.

The judge turned to the gallery and looked up sternly--"I cannot conceive why men and women--women especially--should come crowding in to hear such a case as this; but if I hear another laugh I shall clear the court." Marcella, whose whole conscious nature was by now one network of sensitive nerve, saw Aldous flush and shrink as the words were spoken.

Then, looking across the court, she caught the eye of an old friend of the Raeburns, a county magistrate.

At the judge's remark he had turned involuntarily to where she and Aldous sat; then, as he met Miss Boyce's face, instantly looked away again.