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In their response, lawyers for the trustees painted Hetty as a bitter, coldhearted schemer. Witnesses called forth by the defense, among them Fally and Electa, described in excruciating detail Hetty’s tantrums and her single-minded persistence. It was an extremely unflattering portrait, delving even into Hetty’s wanting habits of personal hygiene. “She told me many times that she did not want to be left with Miss Robinson,” Electa said of Sylvia. The trustees, by extension, represented the interests of every widow, charity, servant, or relation Sylvia Howland had known, dozens of people waiting in the wings for their share of Sylvia’s largesse. It was Hetty against the world, or, in any case, that corner of the world that for most of her life she had called home.

The case as it played out in court essentially became two separate trials. On the one hand was the intrigue of the rich spinster aunt and the ambitious, covetous niece, the lonely nights in the gloomy lamplight at Round Hill farm, the servants’ gossip, nurses being shoved down stairs, temper tantrums and frayed nerves, all of it reading like the precursor to some modern-day soap opera. On the other hand was a painstaking scientific case involving the signatures and allegations of forgery. This side of the case was in its own way as fascinating as the former, not the least because of the collection of famous minds assembled to offer opinions.

The piece of physical evidence upon which Hetty pinned her highest hopes was the now-notorious “second page”—the addendum to Sylvia’s 1862 will. Introduced into evidence, the page read:

Be it remembered that I, Sylvia Ann Howland, of New Bedford, in County of Bristol, do hereby make, publish and declare this the second page of this will and testament made on the eleventh of January in manner following, to wit: Hereby revoking all wills made by me before or after this one—I give this will to my niece to shew if there appears a will made without notifying her, and without returning her will to her through Thomas Mandell as I have promised to do. I implore the Judge to decide in favor of this will, as nothing would induce me to make a will unfavorable to my niece, but being ill and afraid if any of my care-takers insisted on my making a will to refuse, as they might leave or be angry, and knowing my niece had this will to show—my niece fearing also after she went away—I hearing but one side, might feel hurt at what they might say of her, as they tried to make trouble by not telling the truth to me, when she was here even herself. I give this will to my niece to show if absolutely necessary, to have it, to appear against another will found after my death. I wish her to shew this will, made when I am in good health for me, and my old torn will made on the fourth of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, to show also as proof that it has been my lifetime wish for her to have my property. I therefore give my property to my niece as freely as my father gave it to me. I have promised him once, and my sister a number of times, to give it all to her, all excepting about one hundred thousand dollars in presents to my friends and relations.

In witness whereof I have set hereto my hand and seal this eleventh of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two.

Sylvia Ann Howland.

Whenever (and by whomever) this document was conceived, it was painfully obvious that the author sought to allay not Sylvia’s fears, but Hetty’s. The wording is almost comically inept. A skilled con artist would have made the document more general, more ambiguous and sweeping. As written, it is difficult to read the second page and see it as anything other than a rather pathetic last-minute response to Aunt Sylvias final will. The ham-handed appeal to the judge anticipated too closely the court case. The reference to $100,000 for friends and relations seemed an obvious component of Hetty’s campaign to sway Electa and others to her side. Beyond the wording, Hetty