For three people to come
forward and declare that at the time of Mr. Halliday's death they had
suspected Mr. Sheldon of poisoning him, would be to prove nothing to the
minds of a British jury, except that the three people in question were
libellous and ill-disposed persons. The greater the issue, the wider the
chances of escape given to the accused; and a petty offender will be
condemned for picking a pocket upon much lighter grounds than will be
considered sufficient to prove a man guilty of blowing up the Houses of
Parliament.
CHAPTER II.
AFTER THE WEDDING.
The manner in which Mr. Sheldon would act in the future was a matter of
considerable fear to his wife. She had a hazy idea that he would come to
the pleasant Kilburn lodgings to claim her, and insist upon her sharing
his dreary future.
"If I could only have a divorce," she said piteously, when she discussed
the subject with her son-in-law. "There ought to be divorces for such
dreadful things; but I never heard of one before Sir Creswick,
or the new judge, whose name I can't remember. O Valentine, I cannot live
with him; I cannot sit down to dinner day after day with such a man as
that. And to think that I should have known him when I was the merest
girl, and have danced my very first polka with him when it first came in,
and people wore polka boots and polka jackets, and wrote their notes of
invitation upon polka paper, and sang polka songs, and worked polking
peasants in Berlin wool, and went on altogether in the most absurd
manner.
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