The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1900-01-25
WOMAN Of SILENCE
Compared to Blanche MoIi-
neux the Sphinx
is GIDDILY GARRULOUS
Could Tell the Whole Story,
Maybe, If She Would.
S GIDDILY GARRULOUS

New York, Jan. A.-T1se World says
The mystery, or nest of mysteries. thai
resulted in the trial of Roland 3. Moli
neuA for murder is, after thirteen months
OF investigation, not yet made plain
Here and there bits of this marvellous
tangle of crime have been unraveIed
Every player in the drama that ended in
death has had his say-xcept one. For
| the mystery of mysteries, the one who
knows where others only guess, the one
who is silent while others are eager to
prattle the one wha arcEuses curiosity the
most and gratifies it the least,is of course
| the woman
And the woman in this case is Blanche
Chesbrough Molineux, wife of the man
accused directly of the murder of an enc
my and indirectly of the murder of a
friend. A mysterious character had there
been no mystery or murder trial-a wo-
man whose Individuality is so compelling
that no one who has come within It's
range ever forgets it; woman who is so
battling even in the impression she Gre
ates that one person will tell you she is
beautiful, the next that she is plain.
Whatever the truth of this amazing
complication has been, this woman
smiling, self-c0n1ained, Observation-Disclosures
known it. She, to whom no man is in
different, is the one being to whom Ro-
land Molineux is supremacy devoted and
to whom the secrets of his soul ale as
clear as day. She was perhaps the one
woman to whom Henry Barnet, the man
whose death occurred twelve days before
her own marriage, offered freely of his
confidence
II Molineu-I was led by his passion for
her to commit crime she alone knows
that. If there are strange things locked
in Molineux's brain which the world will
never know, you-aI you who are curious
may be sure that his wife shares them
and that she is the only ONE who does
This woman has been seen in public. she
has been mercfl essly interr ogated in the
courtroom. Bait has she futtered with
emotion or paled with dread or given any
sign thai her secrets were not the worlds
secrets? She was well poised, non-com-
mital-no more. No tactics of a prose-
cutting lawyer could surprise this subtle
creature out of her self-possession. If it
is likely that she holds any key to the
crime that intelligence, energy and money
have been helpless to solve it ds still
more likely that nobody will ever be the
wiser through her Yet if she, the most
battling mystery, would speak, how rap
idly might not other mysteries melt
away!
But at what cost this remarkable wo-
man has preserved her poise, her cohven-
tional exterior, it is not possible to guess,
even by imagining ones self in her place
She lives her sad life in silence in an an
palling isolation. It must be remembered
that she had a warm regard for a man
named Barnet. who died suddenly; that
beftre she had time to recover from this
shock she became the bride of a man who
had long loved her and whom she had
previously refused to marry; that when
she had been Molineux's wife only six
weeks he was accused of murder, of one
of the most deliberately villainous crimes
ever conceived; that shortly afterward he
was arrested and committed to prison;
that since then she has made her home
with her husbands broken-hearted father
and mother and seen Molineux himself
only rarely abd under the most Distress
ing circumstances. Leaving out of ac-
count the question as to whether Roland
Molineux is innocent or guilty. the strain
to which the events of the past year must
save subjected his wife is almost incon-
ceivabIe.
No one will contend that Il is an easy
thing for wife to see her husband be-
hind prison bars, or to hear him publicly
denounced for one crime and openly sus-
ness that the outcome of all this public
humiliation may be a death of unutter-
able ignominy; and to dread, although so
new a wife, a swift-coming widowhood
of grief and shame
Moreover, a woman would have to be
callous in every fibre, as Mrs. Molineux
certainly is not. to remain unaffected by
the pity of the spectacle that confronts
her every day, that haunts her while she
sleeps-that of a broken old soldier fight
ing the bravest fight of his life to save
his darling, his youngest from shame and
suspicion, and of brave woman whose
hair grows white in the helpless agony
of a mother praying for her boy.
And, in an atmosphere of such bravely
borne misery, if she ever thinks of her
self Blanche Molineux must recall the as
saults to which she herself has been sub
jected-that her own good name has not
been left untarnished
A year ago Roland Mohneux declared:
Al would rather go to prison than have
my wife's name dragged into this caser'
Chivalrously spoken. but vainly.
For dragged into the case she was. and
left there. stanchly supported by three
persons only-her husband and her hus-
bands father and mother. The MoIi-
neuNs stand by their own
1t is plain that no ordinary woman
could withstand a strain of so unspeak-
able severity and at the end of year