The coroner waited, possibly for the echo of this last "yes" to
cease; then he remarked with a coldness which lifted at once the
veil from his hitherto well disguised antagonism to this witness.

"If you will recount to us anything which your wife said or did on
that evening which, in your mind, was worthy of all this coil, it
might help us to understand the situation."

But the witness made no attempt to do so, and while many of us were
ready to pardon him this show of delicacy, others felt that under
the circumstances it would have been better had he been more open.

Among the latter was the coroner himself, who, from this moment,
threw aside all hesitation and urged forward his inquiries in a way
to press the witness closer and closer toward the net he was secretly
holding out for him. First, he obliged him to say that his
conversation with Miss Tuttle had not tended to smooth matters; that
no reconciliation with his wife had followed it, and that in the
thirty-six hours which elapsed before he returned home again he had
made no attempt to soothe the feelings of one, who, according to his
own story, he considered hardly responsible for any extravagances
in which she might have indulged. Then when this inconsistency had
been given time to sink into the minds of the jury, Coroner Z.
increased the effect produced by confronting Jeffrey with witnesses
who testified to the friendly, if not lover-like relations which had
existed between himself and Miss Tuttle prior to the appearance of
his wife upon the scene; closing with a question which brought out
the denial, by no means new, that an engagement had ever taken place
between him and Miss Tuttle and hence that a bond had been canceled