Temple. All claim on the part of the girl was thus
virtually excluded, for the proceedings which took place that evening in
another room, under circumstances of suspicion, were sworn to only by
Mrs. Hislop herself, an interested witness, and were only partially
confirmed by an eavesdropper, who, as eavesdroppers generally do (except
when their own characters are concerned), perhaps heard according as
foregone prejudices induced her to wish. These suspicious proceedings
might be explained by as many hypotheses as had been devised by the wise
judges of the taverns, among which was the theory of the living child
being Cowie's own by Isabel Napier, and palmed off as Mrs. Napier's to
hide the shame of the true mother,--all unlikely enough, no doubt, but
not so impossible as that the coffined child should now be alive and
awaiting the issue of this case, in the expectation of being Lady of
Eastleys.
On the other side, Mr. Andrews, counsel for Henrietta, maintained that
while his learned brother assumed the one half of the case as proved,
and repudiated the other as a lie or a myth, he had a right to embrace
the other half, and pronounce the first a stratagem or trick.
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