Her own conduct during the trial had tended yet farther to impress
the minds of all present against her. Not that there was anything in
her appearance and manner that was otherwise than calculated to
conciliate pity and favourable opinion. Her entrance into the court
had excited the greatest interest. She had on a black silk dress
made in the simplest and plainest possible fashion; and the colour
of it, where the neckband encircled her slender throat, made an
absolutely startling contrast with the utterly colourless whiteness
of her skin. Her manner was very subdued, very quiet; nor did she
exhibit any signs of fear; or much of emotion, save to those who
were near enough to her to perceive a quiet, silent, and
undemonstrative tear steal occasionally down her dead-white cheek.
But when examined as to her disposal of herself after leaving the
church of Apollinare--as to her motives for changing her purpose, if
it were true, as she stated, that she did change her purpose of
entering the Pineta--she became embarrassed and failed to give any
satisfactory reply.
Ludovico had, at an early stage of the proceedings, been removed
from the court, after having been in vain again and again requested
by the judges to abstain from interfering with the progress of the
case against Paolina.
At last, when almost everybody in the court had made up their minds
that there could, in truth, be no doubt that the young Venetian,
goaded to frenzy by her jealousy, had been the author of the murder,
and quite everybody was convinced that such would be the decision of
the judges, the latter were on the point of retiring from the court
to confer, and consider their sentence, more as a matter of form,
probably, than anything else, when an incident occurred that made a
change in the aspect of matters.
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