I will take the last of those two first, and I may as
well state, without further delay, that I am convinced of the truth of
the story told by Miss Smithers. It would to my mind be impossible for
any man, whose intelligence had been trained by years of experience in
this and other courts, and whose daily duty it is to discriminate as to
the credibility of testimony, to disbelieve the history so
circumstantially detailed in the box by Miss Smithers (Sensation). I
watched her demeanour both under examination and cross-examination very
closely indeed, and I am convinced that she was telling the absolute
truth so far as she knew it.
"And now to come to the second point. It has been suggested, as throwing
doubt upon Miss Smithers' story, that the existence of an engagement to
marry, between her and the plaintiff, may have prompted her to concoct a
monstrous fraud for his benefit; and this is suggested although at the
time of the execution of the tattooing no such engagement did, as a
matter of fact, exist, or was within measurable distance of the parties.
It did not exist, said the Attorney-General; but the disposing mind
existed: in other words, that she was then 'in love'--if, notwithstanding
Mr.
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