He believes passionately in her innocence, and, never doubting that she
loves him in return, he is determined to secure for her a triumphant
acquittal. Just at the crucial moment, however, he learns that she loves
another man; and, overwhelmed by this disillusion, he has still to face
the ordeal and plead her cause. The conjuncture would be still more
dramatic if the revelation of this love were to put a different
complexion on the murder, and, by introducing a new motive, shake the
advocate's faith in his client's innocence. But that is another matter;
the question here to be considered is whether the author did right in
reserving the revelation to the last possible moment. In my opinion he
would have done better to have given us an earlier inkling of the true
state of affairs. To keep the secret, in this case, was to place the
audience as well as the advocate on a false trail, and to deprive it of
the sense of superiority it would have felt in seeing him marching
confidently towards a happiness which it knew to be illusory.
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