It was nearly six o'clock. The court-room with its round white ceiling looked like a crypt in the soft glow of the artificial light, and the Judge, in his black silk gown, with his handsome patrician face, clean-cut but rather soft and flushed with good living, might have been an abbot seated aloft in judgment upon a recalcitrant nun. Mrs. Balfame in her cr pe completed the delusion-if the imaginative spectator glanced no further. The district attorney, who was summing up, looked more like a wasp than ever as he darted back and forth in front of the jury-box, shouting and shaking his fists. Occasionally he would hook his fingers in his waistcoat, balance himself on his heels and with a mere moderation of his rasping tones, demonstrate a contemptuous faith in the strength of his case.
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