His Other Wife: A Novel — page 300: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

2y2 MISTRESS AND MAID. and although a stolid and phlegmatic man in other regards, his professional acumen amounted to genius. There was a still more potent reason for this decision, which was forced upon him by the mortifying withdrawal of the two jurists from his service. Croft had obstinately conceived the idea that Rachel was not provided with the proper character of evidence to convict him of the alleged crime, after such a lapse of time, during which not a breath of suspicion had touched him. It was true that her accurate and circumstantial state- ment of his entire proceedings that related to the poison- ing were so Startling as to deter him from an open defiance of her power to harm him as long as he could obtain her silence on safer terms. | But he-had, from the moment of his arrest, resolved to meet her terrible charges by a flat and absolute denial, and by assuming lunacy for the author of them. | The explanation of his acquiescence in her demands upon him he had already given to Mr. Fields. Lame as this was, he did not despair of rendering it so plausible that the jury and the public would accept it, provided he could successfully repel her monstrous charges against him. The time was rapidly approaching for the sitting of the court at which his case would be tried; but as yet Mr. Dale, the young lawyer now enlisted in Croft’s cause, had been able to ascertain so little that was of valuable con- comicbooks,com