Proclamation was made for silence, and for information, if any person could
give any, concerning the misdemeanour and offence whereof the defendant
stood impeached; and the defendant was bid to look to his challenges, and
the Jury, being gentlemen of the county of Bucks, were called, challenged,
and sworn.
The demand for silence was so far obeyed that there followed a hush within
the enclosure of the court; but there was no cessation of the buzz of
voices and the tramp of footsteps in the hall, which mingled sounds seemed
like the rise and fall of a human ocean, as heard within that panelled
sanctuary.
The lawyers took snuff, shuffled on their seats, nudged each other and
whispered now and then, during the reading of the indictment; but among
Lady Fareham's friends, and the quality in general, there was a breathless
silence and expectancy; and Lady Sarah would gladly have run her hat-pin
into a snuffy old Serjeant close beside her, who must needs talk behind his
hand to his pert junior.
To her ladyship's unaccustomed ears that indictment, translated literally
from the Latin original, sounded terrible as an impeachment in the
subterranean halls of the Vehm Gericht, or in the most select and secret
council in the Venetian Doge's Palace.
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