She may
have engaged herself without knowing the character of the hall, and
the man, Charlie Martin, with his handsome face and pleasing sailor
ways, and at least an Englishman, may have seemed to her a welcome
escape.
She may have been passionately fond of him, and young Hepworth-
-crazy about her, for she was beautiful enough to turn any man's
head--may in Martin's absence have lied to her, told her he was
dead--lord knows what!--to induce her to marry him. The murder may
have seemed to her a sort of grim justice.
But even so, her cold-blooded callousness was surely abnormal! She
had married him, lived with him for nearly a year. To the Jetsons
she had given the impression of being a woman deeply in love with
her husband. It could not have been mere acting kept up day after
day.
"There was something else." We were discussing the case in my
friend's chambers. His brief of eleven years ago was open before
him. He was pacing up and down with his hands in his pockets,
thinking as he talked. "Something that never came out. There was a
curious feeling she gave me in that moment when sentence was
pronounced upon her. It was as if, instead of being condemned, she
had triumphed. Acting! If she had acted during the trial,
pretended remorse, even pity, I could have got her off with five
years.
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