Subsequent investigation can do little to fill out the picture.

It is the old story.

A beautiful woman shoots her absconding lover in cold-blood; and we shall doubtless learn in due time that if she was not as mad as a hare in this month of March, she was at least laboring under what is termed "momentary insanity." It would not be too much to say that upon the first publication of the facts of the tragedy, there was an almost universal feeling of rage against the murderess in the Tombs, and that reports of her beauty only heightened the indignation.

It was as if she presumed upon that and upon her sex, to defy the law; and there was a fervent, hope that the law would take its plain course.
Yet Laura was not without friends, and some of them very influential too.
She had in keeping a great many secrets and a great many reputations, perhaps.

Who shall set himself up to judge human motives.