The latter had not been drilled at practices as had the other pupils , Mr. Perkins choosing not to waste time teaching her what she already knew far better than he did . The only time she had recited it had been at the `` dress rehearsal '' two nights before , at which Sara Ray had not been present . In the poem a Florentine lady of old time , wedded to a cold and cruel husband , had died , or was supposed to have died , and had been carried to `` the rich , the beautiful , the dreadful tomb '' of her proud family . In the night she wakened from her trance and made her escape . Chilled and terrified , she had made her way to her husband 's door , only to be driven away brutally as a restless ghost by the horror-stricken inmates . A similar reception awaited her at her father 's . Then she had wandered blindly through the streets of Florence until she had fallen exhausted at the door of the lover of her girlhood . He , unafraid , had taken her in and cared for her . On the morrow , the husband and father , having discovered the empty tomb , came to claim her . She refused to return to them and the case was carried to the court of law . The verdict given was that a woman who had been `` to burial borne '' and left for dead , who had been driven from her husband 's door and from her childhood home , `` must be adjudged as dead in law and fact , '' was no more daughter or wife , but was set free to form what new ties she would . The climax of the whole selection came in the line , `` The court pronounces the defendant -- DEAD ! '' and the Story Girl was wont to render it with such dramatic intensity and power that the veriest dullard among her listeners could not have missed its force and significance . She swept along through the poem royally , playing on the emotions of her audience as she had so often played on ours in the old orchard . Pity , terror , indignation , suspense , possessed her hearers in turn . In the court scene she surpassed herself . She was , in very truth , the Florentine judge , stern , stately , impassive . Her voice dropped into the solemnity of the all-important line , '' ` The court pronounces the defendant -- ' '' She paused for a breathless moment , the better to bring out the tragic import of the last word . `` DEAD , '' piped up Sara Ray in her shrill , plaintive little voice . The effect , to use a hackneyed but convenient phrase , can better be imagined than described .
Instead of the sigh of relieved tension that should have swept over the audience at the conclusion of the line , a burst XXXXX laughter greeted it .
On as at by from in into of than to