Mr. Munn was also examined about the marriage. He had not yet recovered from the agitation into which he had been thrown during his interview with Wiggins, but seemed in a state of chronic fright.
After these witnesses one other yet remained. It was one whose connection with these events was the closest of all--one upon whom that jury already looked as guilty of a terrible crime--as the one who had inflicted with her own hand that death whose cause they were investigating.
There was no doubt now in any mind. The remains had been identified by all the witnesses. The head had been removed, and had not been found, but the clothes were known to all. By these they judged the remains to be the body of Captain Dudleigh. Wiggins alone hesitated--but it was only hesitation; it was not denial.
When Edith was summoned before the coroner's jury, it was the very first intelligence that she had received of an event in which she was so deeply concerned. The landlady had heard all about the search and its results; but true to her determination to spare Edith all trouble, she had not allowed any news of these proceedings to be communicated to her. When the official appeared with his abrupt summons to attend, the shock was terrible, but there was nothing left except submission. A few brief answers to her hurried and agitated questions put her in possession of the chief facts of the case. On her way to the place she said not a word. The landlady went with her to take care of her, but Edith did not take any notice of her.
As she entered the room where the examination was going on, the scene that presented itself was one which might well have appalled a stouter heart than that of Edith, and which, coming as it did after the shock of this sudden surprise, and in the train of all that she had already suffered, gave to her a sharp pang of intolerable anguish, and filled her soul with horror unspeakable.
[Illustration: "WITH A LOUD CRY, SHE HALF TURNED."]
The rope-ladder lay there with its hook, with which she had effected her escape, and beside these was the dagger which more than once she had interposed between herself and her fierce aggressor; but it was not these that she saw; something else was there which fixed and enchained her gaze, which held her with a terrible fascination. A sheet was thrown over it, but the outlines of that which lay beneath indicated a human form, and the information which Edith had already received made her well aware whose that form was supposed to be. But she said nothing; she stood rigid, horror-stricken, overwhelmed, and looked at it with staring eyes and white lips.