Rachel had
told sadly but firmly of her final quarrel with her husband,
incidentally, but without embarrassment, revealing its cause. A neighbor
was dangerously ill, whom she had been going to nurse that night, when
her husband met her at the door and forbade her to do so.
"Was this neighbor a young man?"
"Hardly more than a boy," said Rachel, "and as friendless as ourselves."
"Was your husband jealous of him?"
"I had no idea of it until that night."
"Did you find it out then?"
"I did, indeed!"
"And where had your husband been spending the evening?"
"I had no idea of that either--until he told me he had been watching the
house--and why!"
Though the man was dead, she could not rid her voice of its scorn; and
presently, with bowed head, she was repeating his last words to her. A
cold thrill ran through the court.
"And was that the last time you saw him alive?" inquired counsel, his
face lightening in ready apprehension of the thrill, and his assurance
coming back to him on the spot, as though it were he who had insisted
on putting his client in the box.
But to this there was no immediate answer; for it was here that the
white-haired man raised his hand to his ear; and the event was exactly
as he seemed to have anticipated.
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