It was only when chemical analysis had approached its present standard of perfection that the presence of the more subtle poisons could be detected in the stomach and intestines, and that the young and beautiful wife could be charged with and found guilty of the deed by the damning evidence of an analytical chemist.
It was Rossiter who secured for David the conduct of Lady Shillito's defence.

Arbella[1] Shillito was his second cousin, a Rossiter by birth, and would fain have married Michael herself, only that he was not at that time thinking of marriage, and when his thoughts turned that way--the very day after, as it were--he met Linda Bennet and her thousands a year.

But he retained a half humorous liking for this handsome young woman.
[Footnote 1: An old Northumbrian variant of Arabella.] Arbella, disappointed over Michael--though she was a mere slip of a girl at the time--next decided that she must marry money.

When she was twenty-one she met Grimthorpe Shillito, an immensely rich man of Newcastle-on-Tyne, whose foundries poured out big guns and many other things made of iron and steel combined with acids and brains.
Grimthorpe was a curious-looking person, even at forty; in appearance a mixture of Julius Caesar, several unpleasant-featured Doges of Venice, and Voltaire in middle age.

His looks were not entirely his fault and doubtless acquired for him, in his moral character, a worse definition than he deserved.