A Butterfly on the Wheel: A Novel

by Guy Thorne; Edward G. Hemmerde; Francis Neilson

"Don't you see, man, if you call in the court to break her wings, you'll only drive her to me!"

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"Yes," Admaston answered with a bitter sneer, "I see—and you don't seem very anxious to go through with it."

Collingwood looked at him for a moment, trembling with the desire to fly at his throat. He restrained himself, however, with a tremendous effort, and with an inarticulate growl of rage turned and left the room.

Peggy came timidly towards her husband. "George, you are not going to send me away?" she said.

Admaston covered his face with his hands. "My God! Peggy, you lied to me," he said in a broken voice. "A lie—a lie on your lips! Oh, Peggy, Peggy, what have I done to you?"

"George, I did lie," she wailed—"yes, I did; but only that, only that! I am your wife! Believe me! believe me!"

"My wife! No—no! How am I to believe you? How am I to tell whether that's a lie or not?"

"It's the truth!" she reiterated, her voice shrill with pain. "I swear it! I am as much your wife as I was the day you married me."

Unable to stand longer, she sank down upon the sofa, sobbing terribly.

"You have broken me," the man said—"crushed me. Oh! I was mad to let you do it! I was a fool to leave you alone! But I trusted you. I laughed at the gossip. The ridicule only made my trust in you the greater. I worshipped you, adored you! My whole life was a prayer to you, my ambition to make you proud of me. My whole aim in life was to win you, by doing big things—for you. And now it is all turned to desecration—to be the mock of the crowd!"

"Forgive me, George," she sobbed, "forgive me! I'll come to you. I am humble, not you. I am struck down, crushed. But I'll be your slave. I am still your wife. I am still——"

He gazed at her searchingly. "You love Collingwood," he said in a hollow, empty voice.

"No, no! There was a time when I thought I did."

"You thought you did! When did you think it? Last night?"

"No, George, no! I love you! I knew that last night, if I never knew it before. I love you, George!"

"I don't believe you," he answered coldly. "You and he were together alone when I telephoned."

He spoke very deliberately now. "Was he," he asked—"was he with you when I telephoned at one o'clock?"

"Yes," Peggy answered, knowing well what the admission must convey. "Yes—but...."

"Alone together from ten o'clock?..."

"Yes," she said, still more faintly; "but...."

"Alone together from the time I telephoned?"

"No, no, George!—not after that; I swear it!"

"I know far too much to believe a word you say," he replied, and there was a note of absolute finality in his voice.

She saw that he had made up his mind—that she was doomed.

"I know too much to believe a word you say," he repeated. "You were alone with him. My God! Alone with him!"

In a moment or two Peggy looked up through a mist of tears. The room was empty.

Peggy was left alone.

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CHAPTER VI

One morning upon a dull day in the late summer of the same year in which Mrs. Admaston had stayed at the Hôtel des Tuileries in Paris, Colonel Adams came down to breakfast at the Cocoa Tree Club. He ordered his grilled kidneys in the quaint, old-fashioned dining-room, with its rare sporting prints and air of sober comfort, and took up his morning paper. His eyes fell upon the cause list of the Royal Courts of Justice, and he sighed.

A few minutes afterwards Henry Passhe, whose leave from India had been extended for reasons of health, and who was also a member of the famous club in St. James's Street, entered and sat down by his friend.

"Well," he said, "do you still hold to your resolution, Adams?"

The colonel sighed, and put down his knife and fork. "I don't know, old chap," he said doubtfully. "It's different for you. You see, you don't know Mrs. Admaston. I know her quite well, and I really doubt whether it is the chivalrous thing to do, to go and stare at her, as if she was a sort of show. She'll be undergoing tortures all day, poor little thing!"

"Just as you like," Passhe answered. "I confess to great curiosity myself, and of course everyone who can possibly get in will be going, whether they are friends of Mrs. Admaston or of her husband. It's great good luck, my getting two seats like this; but don't come unless you like. I can easily find someone else who will be only too glad to drop in for an hour or two. That's all I want to do—just to see what's going on. You see it is the case of the century almost. I am not up in the statistics of this sort of thing, but I doubt if a Cabinet Minister, who is also one of the wealthiest men in England, has ever brought an action for divorce against his wife, who is not only as rich as he in her own right, but also is co-partner in one of the biggest financial houses in Europe. That's the way I look at it."

"Well, I'll come," the colonel said suddenly. "It can't do any harm, after all; and I am sure all my sympathies are with Mrs. Admaston, though of course...."

Passhe nodded. "But there is absolutely no doubt about it," he said, "of course. But naturally, old chap, the fact of our both being in the hotel in Paris at the very time it all happened gives the thing a special interest for us. When I go back to India everybody will be wanting to know all about it; and as I have got a chance to be present at part of the trial, I really can't forego it."

"That's settled, then," Adams replied, as the two men strolled into the big smoke-room, where the brown-cased Cocoa Tree is put with all its old associations of the past. They fidgeted about a little, smoked a cigarette, while they looked down into the busy St. James's Street from the great Georgian windows, looked at their watches, and then hailed a taxi-cab and were driven to the Law Courts.

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Court II. in the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice was crowded almost to suffocation as the two men entered and found, with some difficulty, the seats which had been allotted to them. They settled themselves quietly in their places in the well of the court.

The President was writing something in the book before him, and seated below the judge was the associate, while the usher stood a few yards away.

Lots of people—and these the most fortunate—have never had occasion to visit a law court. It was so with Colonel Adams. This was the first time he had ever entered the great building at the junction of Fleet Street and the Strand, and he gazed round him with great interest.

He saw many faces that he knew. Immediately around him were the privileged of society sitting behind the solicitors; Admaston, Roderick Collingwood, the maid Pauline, and Lord Ellerdine.

In the second row the leading counsel sat.

Mr. Menzies, hawk-faced and saturnine of aspect, the horse-hair wig which framed his face only accentuating the hatchet-like alertness of his countenance. Sir Robert Fyffe, huge-framed, and with a face like the risen moon. Mr. M'Arthur, a youthful-looking man, handsome and débonnaire, but with something rather dangerous and threatening in his face.

Behind the leaders sat a row of junior counsel; and then Lady Attwill, other members of society, and the two friends who had driven from the Cocoa Tree Club.

The gallery at the back of the court was packed with people, and there was a curious hush and stillness over everything.

All eyes were directed to one point—to the witness-box, where Mrs. Admaston was standing.

At the moment when the two men entered both Mr. M'Arthur and Sir Robert Fyffe were standing up.

"I have noted your question, Mr. M'Arthur, and do not think it is admissible at this stage," the President was saying. "No doubt, if Sir Robert's cross-examination follows a certain line, you can return to the matter when you re-examine your witness."

Sir Robert Fyffe sat down.

"If your lordship pleases," he said

Mr. M'Arthur turned over the leaves of a notebook. He was Mrs. Admaston's leading counsel, and his examination continued:

"Now, Mrs. Admaston, let me be quite sure that you clearly understand the charges you have to meet. It is alleged that you arranged to miss the train at Boulogne in order to spend the evening in Paris with the co-respondent."

"That is not true," pierced through the dull, blanket-like silence of the court.

Few people enough have any experience of a court. They read long and large accounts of what goes on in the daily papers. Well-known descriptive writers endeavour to present a true picture of what they themselves have witnessed. And in the result almost every one whose experience of trials is taken almost entirely from the newspapers imagines that the scene of justice is some vast hall. It is all magnified and splendid in their thoughts. The reality is quite different.

A quite small room, panelled, badly lighted, thronged with people—this is the real theatre where the dramas of society are played in London town....

"It is alleged," Mr. M'Arthur, Peggy's own counsel, continued, "that, having reached Paris, you permitted Mr. Collingwood to engage rooms—connected the one with the other."

"I did not know that Mr. Collingwood's room opened out of mine," Mrs. Admaston said. "It seems the hotel was full."

Everyone in the court—one person only excepted—was looking at the slim young woman in the witness-box. She was very simply dressed. Her face was perfectly pale, but her self-possession was marvellous.

From their seats behind the junior counsel, Colonel Adams and Henry Passhe looked on with sympathetic interest.

Passhe—who was somewhat of a psychologist—remarked upon the extreme simplicity of Mrs. Admaston's dress to his friend. "I call it ostentatious," he said, "or something of a trick. When a woman has an income of eighty thousand pounds a year quite apart from her husband, it seems to me exaggerated humility to appear in the clothes that any little milliner might wear."

Colonel Adams shrugged his shoulders. He didn't in the least understand his friend's point of view....

"After you went to bed"—the handsome young-elderly Mr. M'Arthur continued,—"it is said that you permitted Mr. Collingwood to enter your room—you being at the time undressed—and to stay there a considerable time."

Peggy's little white-gloved hands rested upon the rail of the witness-box.

"I don't know about permitting," she said in a clear voice. "He came in because he heard the telephone. I think he thought that I had gone to bed, and that the call might be from our friends."

"At anyrate, he came in, and you permitted him to stay?"

"Yes, I suppose I did. I asked him to go, but we were great friends, and—well—I let him stay and smoke a cigarette."

The court was dead silent now; the keen face of the President regarded counsel and witness with an intent scrutiny.

The society people who were there looked at each other and held their breath. The junior counsel leant forward from their benches, keenly attentive to the efforts of the respondent's friend.

"It is alleged," Mr. M'Arthur continued, "that while you were alone together you were unfaithful to your husband."

"That is a lie." The voice was so poignant, so ringing, so instinct with indignation, that even the President looked up and watched the witness keenly. Mr. M'Arthur nodded to himself as if very pleased with the response he had elicited. He put his hands together and made a motion as though he was congratulating himself.

When he looked up again his face was perfectly bright and cheerful.

"I will put this generally," he said. "Have you ever, Mrs. Admaston—ever, on any occasion or in any place—been unfaithful to your husband?"

"Never—never—never!" Peggy replied....

She seemed no more the young and frivolous person she had been. Tense and strung up, her personality had become arresting and real—her voice seemed to carry conviction.

Mr. M'Arthur looked round the court—with a half glance at the President—and sat down.

As a matter of fact, he had the very gravest doubt as to the possible success of his case. That sleuth-hound, Sir Robert Fyffe, was against him, and the case itself was a thoroughly weak one. He, accomplished barrister, actor, and man of the world as he was, sat down with a quietly suggested air of triumph that impressed every one.

Sir Robert Fyffe rose.

Sir Robert Fyffe was the absolute leader in his own particular line. There was something so red-faced and jolly about him—such a suggestion of friendliness even when he was most deadly,—that the eminence he enjoyed was very well deserved. His voice was mellow; indeed, it was more than that, and had a suggestion of treacle.

He looked at Mrs. Admaston with a bland smile.

"You will, I am sure, admit, Mrs. Admaston, that the events of the 23rd March give ground for very grave suspicion."

Peggy Admaston did not seem at all distressed by this question. Her voice showed the pain that she was enduring, but all her answers to counsel were delivered clearly and openly. They had either a frank innocence about them, or else she was certainly one of the most accomplished actresses and liars of her time.

"Some persons are more suspicious than others," Peggy answered.

"And one would be more justly suspicious of some persons than of others?"

"Yes, perhaps so."

"And may I take it that you class yourself among those persons upon whom suspicion should not readily fall?"

Peggy nodded vigorously. "I think so," she said.

The great, round, red face of Sir Robert beamed upon her in the kindliest way. His voice—which carried right through the court—was still ingratiating and honey-sweet.

"You say," he said, "that your husband ought not to have allowed even these circumstances to make him suspect you?"

"He had always trusted me implicitly," she replied.

The accomplished counsel made a remark sotto voce. "Perhaps too implicitly," he said.

Mr. M'Arthur jumped up in a second and looked at the judge.

"My learned friend has no right to say that," he said.

The President, with his air of taking very little interest at all in the proceedings, raised his eyelids.

"I did not hear what he said," he remarked blandly.

"Never mind, Mr. M'Arthur; I don't mind Sir Robert," Peggy said from the witness-box very sweetly.

"I am sure we shall get on very well," Sir Robert replied. "Now, Mrs. Admaston, I suppose you were very annoyed at finding you were in the wrong train?"

"I was annoyed, I suppose," Peggy answered; "but not very seriously. You see, it really didn't matter very much."

Sir Robert nodded his great bewigged head. "I suppose not," he said. "Was it your fault?"

The girl's clear accents rang out into the court. "I don't think it was anybody's fault, except the fussy customs officer's."

"This fussiness could have been avoided by registering the luggage through—yes?"

"I suppose so," Peggy answered Sir Robert.

The big man leant forward with the most ingratiating face. "Can you," he asked, "suggest any reason why the luggage was not registered?"

"I believe it was the mistake of a porter at Charing Cross."

"The mistake of a porter, the fussiness of a custom-house officer—quite a chapter of accidents!" Sir Robert continued blandly.

Mrs. Admaston seemed to find something consoling in the voice of the great K.C.

"Wasn't it!" she said brightly.

There was no response in the manner or in the voice of Mr. Admaston's counsel.

"Was your luggage with Mr. Collingwood's at Charing Cross?" he asked—blandly still, but with a threatening hint of what was to come in his voice.

"All the luggage was together when I saw it."

"All? The luggage of the whole party?"

"Yes," Peggy replied.

"Was it labelled, Mrs. Admaston? I mean, apart from the railway labels?"

"Mine wasn't."

"Don't you generally label your luggage when you go abroad?" Sir Robert continued.

"I always do."

"Well, Mrs. Admaston, why did you not do so this time?"

"Well, you see," Peggy answered, "Mr. Collingwood, who is a great traveller, chaffed me about being such an old maid. He said it was quite unnecessary."

The big moon-faced counsel almost jumped—experienced as he was—at this remark.

"Oh!" he said, "Mr. Collingwood said that, did he?"

"It was lucky," Peggy replied; "wasn't it?"

Suddenly the President looked up. His kindly but austere face became surprised.

"Lucky?" he said.

Peggy turned towards the judge. "Yes, my lord," she said; "otherwise I should have reached Paris without any clothes."

The President nodded gravely. "Yes, I see," he said. "The boxes fortunately made the same mistake as you did."

Peggy laughed. "Yes, Sir John," she said, and as she did it there was a little ripple of amusement round the crowded court.

Of course, everybody knew that the judge who was trying this case had met the Admastons over and over again.

Every one there, with the exception of the people in the gallery, was a member of what is called society. Peggy, in her innocent simplicity, could not quite differentiate between Sir John Burroughes, who was trying the case of her innocence or guilt, and Mr. M'Arthur or Sir Robert Fyffe, K.C., M.P. She was bewildered. She had met all these men at dinner-parties or receptions. She still thought that this was all a kind of weird game. She did not realise that Sir Robert Fyffe was about to hunt her to the death of her reputation, or that Sir John Burroughes—the President—would give his judgment without fear or favour.

As a matter of fact, there was a little ripple of laughter right through the court when she addressed the President as "Sir John."

Sir Robert Fyffe continued his examination. "Very lucky, Mrs. Admaston," he said grimly. "And did Mr. Collingwood's luggage make the same mistake as yours?"

"Yes," Peggy answered.

"And the luggage belonging to Lord Ellerdine and Lady Attwill had the intelligence to go straight to Chalons?"

"Yes," Peggy answered again.

"Didn't it strike you as rather odd that your luggage should not have been registered?"

Peggy tried to recollect. "No, it didn't," she said. "It struck my maid as odd, I remember."

A keen note came into Sir Robert Fyffe's voice. The blandness and suavity seemed to have left it.

"It struck your maid as odd?" he said sharply.

"Maids who are devoted to us are often more suspicious than we are," Peggy answered. "Don't you think so, Sir Robert?"

The big red face turned full upon her for a moment. People who watched it carefully might have discerned a slight expression of compunction. He had known this little butterfly in private life, but now professional considerations overbore everything. He was Sir Robert Fyffe because he did his job—had always done his job.

"I am afraid I am not here to say what I think," he answered quickly.

Peggy realised the situation in a moment. She was fighting desperately, but nothing gave an index to the fact.

"Oh, we all know that, Sir Robert!" she said, and there was a slight murmur and ripple of laughter through the court.

The President raised his eyes above his glasses and stared gravely round.

Silence was restored.

"Your maid's luggage," said Sir Robert, "had the good fortune to reach Paris too?"

"Yes."

"Did Mr. Collingwood attend to the luggage at Charing Cross—the luggage of the whole party, I mean?"

"Yes, I think he did."

"Do you think, Mrs. Admaston, that you would remember the porter who made the mistake?"

Peggy seemed to be trying to remember something. "No," she said doubtfully. "I don't think I could."

"Do you remember having a conversation with him?" Sir Robert continued, his face as bland and confidential as any face could be.

"No, I don't remember."

"Your name was on your boxes in full, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, Mrs. Admaston, don't you remember having a talk with him about your husband?"

Peggy looked up brightly. Something seemed to have struck her.

"Oh yes," she said quickly. "Wasn't he a constituent?"

Sir Robert bowed sweetly. "I think he was," he said. "At anyrate, a great admirer." Then he turned round. "Will Mr. Stevens please stand up?"

Just behind the barristers and the seats in which the society people were sitting, a broad, short, and sturdy man rose from the pit of the court.

"Now," Sir Robert said to Mrs. Admaston, "do you recognise him?"

Peggy leant over the rail of the box with real interest—if it was not affectation.

"No," she said doubtfully; "I could not say for certain."

"But if Mr. Stevens can swear that he is the man with whom you had the conversation?"

"Oh! then he must be right, Sir Robert," Peggy answered.

Mr. Menzies rose in his place. "My client, Mr. Collingwood, recognises the man, m'lud—there is no doubt about it."

"Very well," the President answered quietly. "We shall have that later."

"So that is the porter who made the mistake," Sir Robert resumed in a voice full of meaning. "You can sit down, Mr. Stevens. Would you be surprised to hear that your luggage and Mr. Collingwood's was not registered, upon the express instructions of Mr. Collingwood, and that Lord Ellerdine's and Lady Attwill's luggage was registered through, also upon his instructions?"

Mr. M'Arthur rose. "My lord," he said, "this cannot be evidence against my client. Even if Mr. Collingwood was acting as her agent, such instructions were clearly outside his authority."

Sir Robert glanced round quickly. "One moment, Mr. M'Arthur," he said, in a voice full of meaning. "If it should turn out, Mrs. Admaston, that Mr. Collingwood gave express instructions that your luggage should not be registered—that, you say, was not according to your instructions?"

"It is incredible that he should have given such instructions," Peggy said.

"Incredible!" said Sir Robert Fyffe.

"Unless——" Peggy replied, then stopped short and bit her lip.

Every one in the court noticed that the judge had lifted his head and was looking keenly at her.

"Well? Unless what, Mrs. Admaston?" Sir Robert Fyffe asked quickly.

Peggy did not answer at all.

"Shall I finish it for you?" Sir Robert continued, with his famous little menacing gesture of the right hand. "Unless he had intended to give his friends the slip at Boulogne, and stay the night in Paris with you. Is that what you were going to say?"

"Yes, it was, for a moment," the girl answered, "until it struck me how absurd it was."

"It strikes you as absurd, does it?"

"Yes, it does rather," she replied.

"I suppose it would strike you as equally absurd that Mr. Collingwood had already engaged rooms at the Hôtel des Tuileries for himself and a lady, two days before you left London? Or do you think the rooms were engaged for some other lady?"

"I don't believe they were engaged at all before we arrived," came the answer quickly.

Sir Robert nodded his big head. "We shall hear, no doubt, from Mr. Collingwood. Am I to take it, then, that you had no knowledge of the fact that your luggage was not registered, and that you had no knowledge of the fact that Mr. Collingwood had already taken rooms for himself and a lady before you left London?"

"I had no knowledge whatever—none at all," Peggy replied with great emphasis.

"And I think you told my learned friend in examination-in-chief that you had no knowledge of the fact that both your bedroom and Mr. Collingwood's opened out of the same sitting-room?"

"That is so, Sir Robert."

"I think you telegraphed to Chalons when you got to Paris to tell Lord Ellerdine of your mistake?"

"Mr. Collingwood did so for me."

"And to your husband?"

"No; that was not necessary."

In some subtle, but very real fashion, the atmosphere of the court was becoming more and more charged with excitement. Everybody was sitting perfectly still. All eyes were directed to the slim figure of the girl in the witness-box. The hush was not broken by any sounds, save only that of the great counsel's voice with its deadly innuendo, its remorseless logic of fact, and the replies of the sweet-voiced girl.

"Why not?" Sir Robert asked, with a deep note of suggestion.

"I did not want to worry him with our silly mistakes," was the answer; and even as she gave it Peggy's heart sank like lead within her, realising how inadequate and feeble it sounded.

"Did you think that it would annoy your husband to think that you and Mr. Collingwood were alone in Paris?"

"Not a bit," she replied.

"Then why didn't you tell him? You had nothing to hide?"

"Nothing whatever."

There was a pause. Sir Robert's face still wore an expectant look. He was obviously waiting for a reply.

It came at length, and every person in the court as they heard it smiled, frowned, or sighed according to their several temperaments.

"I really don't know why I didn't tell him."

"Let me suggest a reason. You didn't tell because you didn't want him to know?"

"I don't think that is true," Peggy answered.

"Come, Mrs. Admaston; you heard the evidence of the detective?"

"Yes, I did."

"He has told the jury that when the telephone message came through from your husband you were in the room; that you stayed by and heard the co-respondent tell your husband that Lord Ellerdine was staying at the hotel—a deliberate lie; and that you refused to speak to your husband. Is that true?"

The answer, the miserable answer, came in the faintest of voices from the box:

"Yes."

And now there was every sign of what the newspapers call a "sensation" in court. Colonel Adams and Henry Passhe looked at each other significantly. "That's done for her," Passhe whispered to his friend. Ladies nudged each other. The reporters wrote furiously. The judge leaned forward a little more over his desk.

"Why did you connive at this lie?"

"I don't know. Really, I don't know."

"Why did you refuse to speak to your husband?"

Peggy was silently gazing downwards.

"You have told us that it would not have annoyed your husband to think that you and Mr. Collingwood were alone in Paris."

"Why should it have annoyed him," Peggy answered, "if it were an accident?"

"Exactly!" Sir Robert continued—"if it were an accident. I put it to you that the only fact which made you afraid to speak to your husband was because you knew it was not an accident, and that he had just cause for resentment."

"That is not true," Peggy said, with a little flicker of the spirit she had shown at first.

"I don't wish to be unfair," said Sir Robert Fyffe—and no man at the Bar was fairer than the famous counsel in his cross-examinations.

"You are not unfair, Sir Robert," Peggy said; "but, oh! it is all unfair."

Sir Robert gave a little sigh, which may or may not have been a genuine expression of feeling, but was probably sincere enough. His duty lay before him, however, and, like some sworn torturer of the Middle Ages, he must pursue it to the end.

"I must press you upon this point," he said. "What made you afraid to tell your husband that you were alone in Paris? What made you agree with Mr. Collingwood, Lord Ellerdine, and Lady Attwill to say that you had not been alone with Mr. Collingwood in Paris?"

"I cannot tell you," Peggy answered. "I was very upset, and really not quite myself."

"Not quite yourself?" followed upon the heels of her answer with lightning rapidity. "Very upset? What had happened to upset you?"

Peggy made a motion—an instinctive motion—as if to free herself from something, something that was slowly but surely tightening round her. Every one noticed it, every one understood it.

"Nothing," she said at length.

At this there was a ripple of laughter through the court, and cutting in upon it, before it had quite died away, the accusing voice was heard: "Nothing? If that is so, can you give any reason why Lord Ellerdine and Lady Attwill should have connived at this deception?"

"I suppose they thought they were shielding me."

"Shielding you!" Sir Robert cried in mock surprise. "From what? Tell me, Mrs. Admaston," he continued, as Peggy looked round the court helplessly—"tell me, do you think that Lord Ellerdine—he is an old friend?"

"Yes, a dear old friend," Peggy said, glad to be able to say something for a moment which did not tell against her.

"Do you think that Lord Ellerdine and Lady Attwill believed that you were in Paris, by accident?"

"How can I tell?" Peggy replied, not in the least seeing to what this was leading.

"Have you any doubt? Why do you think that Lord Ellerdine returned to Paris by the night train instead of letting you join them at Chalons, except that he thought something was very seriously wrong?"

"I have told you," Peggy replied, "that he thought he was shielding me."

"But you have not told me from what he thought he was shielding you. What was he to shield you from?"

"Nothing," Peggy said once more. And again there was a ripple of laughter throughout the court.

At this Sir Robert Fyffe allowed himself his first look at the jury, and a most significant one it was. Then he turned quickly to the witness-box. "Nothing!" he cried. "Then why did you invent—or connive at the invention of—this story?"

"Why did I?" the girl said helplessly. "I don't know. I thought it foolish. I saw that they had told a lying story to my husband, thinking to serve me, and I didn't want to give them away."

"You lied to your husband because you didn't wish to give your good-natured friends away. Is that really your reason, Mrs. Admaston?"

"Yes," she answered, "and I loathed myself for it."

"It was perhaps the first time that you had deceived your husband?" Sir Robert said blandly.

"Yes," came the answer with a pause, and very faintly given.

"You arrived at the hotel under the impression that your presence in Paris was due to a mistake?"

"Yes."

"You supped in your room with Mr. Collingwood?"

"Yes."

"And what time did you sup?"

"About 10 or 10.15."

"What did you do after supper? I suppose you finished about 11?"

"I suppose so," Peggy replied.

"Well—what did you do? The table, I think, was not cleared before you retired to bed—that is so, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"How did you spend the time between 11 and 12.30?"

"We were talking."

"No doubt you told the waiter not to clear away so that you should not be disturbed?"

"I really forget," Peggy said.

"At anyrate, you were not disturbed?"

"No."

"And spent a charming evening?"

"Yes."

"Unspoilt by any idea that your presence there was due to a deliberate and successful device to give your companions the slip?"

Helpless as she was in those skilled, remorseless hands, Peggy nevertheless flared up at this.

"To have had such an idea," she said, with a dignity which was strangely piteous under the circumstances, "would have been an insult to Mr. Collingwood."

"Always assuming," said Sir Robert, "that Mr. Collingwood made his plans without your knowledge."

"I don't believe that Mr. Collingwood made the plans you suggest."

"And nothing will shake your faith in Mr. Collingwood?" said Sir Robert with great suavity.

"My faith in him is not likely to be shaken by the hired evidence of detectives, railway porters, or hotel servants."

"You mustn't talk like that, Mrs. Admaston," the judge said gravely.

"When did it first seem to you that your presence in Paris was not due to a mistake?" Sir Robert went on.

"My maid hinted it to me while she was doing my hair before I went to bed."

"Your maid is an old and privileged servant?"

"She is far more than a servant. She is a devoted friend."

"You are sure of that?"

"Absolutely."

Sir Robert nodded to himself, and his nod sent a shiver of apprehension through the girl in the witness-box.

"The subject admits of no discussion?" he asked, and there was a suppressed eagerness in his voice.

"None," Peggy answered.

Sir Robert nodded again. "Very well," he said sotto voce. "You have told me that you were annoyed, but not seriously, at missing the train, and I suppose, Mrs. Admaston, I may add at finding yourself in Paris?"

The examination seemed to have fallen a little from its strained note.

"That is so," Peggy replied, slightly relieved.

"Did Mr. Collingwood seem much distressed at the turn of events?" asked Sir Robert.

And then—it might have been rising hysteria, or it might have been a totally innocent misapprehension of what was going on, but Peggy laughed.

Her laugh went rippling out into the court.

"He did not seem inconsolable," she said.

Her laughter was echoed by that of every one in the court; even Sir Robert's red and genial face relaxed into a smile.

"And I daresay," he said in quite a kindly voice,—"I daresay you would as soon be stranded in Paris with Mr. Collingwood as with any one?"

"Oh, much sooner," Peggy said. "He is a very charming companion."

"Perhaps," Sir Robert Fyffe answered, "I may allow myself to say the same of his companion?"

Peggy smiled brightly. "Well," she said, "it would not be the first time you had said so, Sir Robert."

"Nor will it be the last, Mrs. Admaston," the K.C. replied with a courtly bow, and a really charming smile upon his face.

Then suddenly he stood a little more upright, shifted the gown upon his shoulders, touched his wig, and looked at Peggy keenly. He was once more the keen advocate doing his duty, whatever it might cost him in personal emotion.

"But we must pass on," he said. "Very well. You finished supper at last, and about 12.30 you went to bed. Your maid joined you and you got undressed." Here Sir Robert put his pince-nez upon his nose, and leant over to see the ground-plan of the rooms of the Hôtel des Tuileries, which the solicitor on the bench before him held up for his inspection.

Sir Robert looked at the coloured plan for a moment with intense scrutiny. Then, having refreshed his memory, he turned his face once more to the witness-box.

"Mr. Collingwood," he continued, "had left you by the door leading into the passage, I suppose?"

"Yes," Peggy replied.

"You had no idea that he was occupying the room communicating with yours?"

"None."

"You then sent your maid to bed?"

"Yes."

"And it was shortly after that that the telephone bell rang—the call from Chalons?"

"Very shortly after," Peggy replied.

She seemed to be extremely interested in this conversation between herself and Sir Robert Fyffe—interested in it as if she were playing some game of which the issue would not matter. At this period of the famous cross-examination she seemed to be perfectly bright and unconcerned.

"And you went to answer it?" Sir Robert went on.

"Yes," she said.

Sir Robert clutched the bands of his gown and looked at her with the very keenest scrutiny.

"And will you tell my lord and the jury what happened?" he said.

"While I was speaking—I had my back to the door—I suddenly heard Mr. Collingwood's voice behind me."

Sir Robert started. "You were surprised—startled?" he said in an eager voice.

"I was," Peggy answered—"very."

The K.C.'s head was bent forward and was swaying slightly from side to side, as the head of a snake sways before it strikes. He was quite unconscious of the marked hostility of his attitude, but the game, the big, exciting game which he was playing, which he was paid so highly to play, and which had become the chief excitement of his life, had caught hold of him in all his nerves.

"Had he knocked?" he said.

"I didn't hear him," Peggy replied, "or of course I should not have let him come in."

"I see," Sir Robert replied. "You were hardly dressed to receive gentlemen visitors?"

"Well, hardly."

"You were angry, Mrs. Admaston?"

"I was angry," Peggy replied.

"Now! how did you show your anger?"

"By telling him to go back to his room."

"Did he go?"

"No."

And now laughter, loud and almost inextinguishable, filled the court. Every one was enjoying himself or herself enormously. There was a sort of atmosphere of French farce about the sombre court. Every one had, by now, forgotten that they had lunched and dined at the hospitable tables of Mr. and Mrs. Admaston. They were there for a show—they were out for blood—it was a bull-fight to these pleasant ladies and gentlemen.

Mr. Henry Passhe was obviously enjoying himself. He laughed as loudly as any one, until the warning "Hush!" of the usher suppressed the merriment. He looked towards his friend, but he saw that Colonel Adams's lean brown face was drawn and wrinkled up with pain. Then he himself—for he was a decent-minded man enough—felt a little ashamed of his jocularity, and he turned once more to an intent watching of this tragic spectacle.

"No doubt," Sir Robert said, "that made you more angry—yes?"

Mrs. Admaston did not answer, but Sir Robert persisted.

"Didn't it make you more angry?" he said.

Suddenly Peggy looked up, and her voice rippled with laughter—she was a butterfly, a thing of sunshine and shadow, but shadow never distressed her for very long.

"I never remain angry very long," she said.

Sir Robert took no notice of the way in which she answered. His big voice went on, tolling quietly like a distant bell.

"But you were angry?"

"I wanted him to go," Peggy replied impatiently.

"Quite so," said Sir Robert. "But you allowed him to stay?"

She heard once more that inexorable persistence, that bland, passionless, but remorseless voice.

The little flicker of gaiety and of respite was over. She braced herself once more to stand up against this relentless onslaught, and clutched the rail of the witness-box before her.

"We are very old friends, Sir Robert," she answered. "I saw no particular harm in it."

"If you saw no particular harm in it, why did you not care to speak to your husband when he rang up?"

"One may do perfectly harmless things," she replied, "and yet not care to tell every one about them."

"And this was one of those perfectly harmless things which you didn't care to tell every one, or even your husband, about?"

"There was no harm in it," Peggy replied, and her voice rang out with a dreadful sense of suppressed irritation and pain.

"So little that you permitted Mr. Collingwood to stay with you—for quite a long time?"

"Not very long," she answered.

"Until the telephone call from your husband?"

"I suppose so."

Sir Robert Fyffe began to seem very pleased with himself. There was no bitterness in his voice—only an extreme politeness. But by now he kept glancing carefully at the jury, watching them with lightning glances, and gathering all the information he possibly could from the expressions on their faces—their immobility or movements of interest.

"Up to that time," Sir Robert remarked—and his question had really the note of a casual inquiry—"up to that time had he shown any sign of going?"

"I don't think so."

The next query startled the whole court, not so much from its directness—though that was patent enough,—but by reason of the way in which it was rapped out.

It was said in a hard, threatening, staccato voice: "What were you both doing?"

The answer was rather reflective than otherwise. It showed no apprehension of the intention of the examiner.

"Sitting on the sofa—he was smoking, I think," Peggy said.

"Should I be right in saying that during most of this time he was making passionate love to you?"

All the reporters looked up, their pencils poised, their eyes avid of sensation.

"He was very fond of me," Mrs. Admaston replied.

"Passionately in love with you?"

There was a perceptible hesitation. "I think he was very fond of me."

Sir Robert's words came from him like the blows of a hammer upon a nail: "Have you any doubt that he was passionately in love with you?"

"He told me so."

"I put it to you that you knew it, and had known it for months?"

It was an odd contrast between the triumphant note which had crept into the great barrister's voice and the diminuendo of Peggy's.

There was no gaiety now. The forces were joined. The battle, which had been an affair of skirmishes before, was now in full cry.

"I only knew what he told me." The voice was quite desperate now.

"And when did he first tell you? The night you were in Paris? Is that when you say?"

"Yes," the answer came, and the President leant forward to be sure that he heard the admission aright.

The big, round, red face of Sir Robert Fyffe was now redder than ever. His eyes blinked as if the lids could hardly veil the silent fire which peered out from them.

"Do you swear that? Please be careful...."

"I think that was the first time."

"I suggest to you," said Sir Robert, turning towards the jury, the President, and then to Peggy—"I suggest to you, Mrs. Admaston, that he had been making passionate love to you for months."

There was an intense silence in the court.

The members of the jury were obviously excited. Different members showed it in different ways. There were men who struggled to give no indication of their feelings, and made effort at an entire lack of expression. Others showed evident and lively interest.

"I knew for some months that he was very fond of me."

"And did your husband know?" echoed out into the court.

"I suppose so," was the faint answer.

"Do you suggest that your husband would ever have permitted you to go away, even in the company of friends, with a man who had been abusing his friendship by making passionate love to his wife?"

There was no answer to that. No sound came from the witness-box—the whole court waited for the response.

Sir Robert was leaning forward now, his head shaking from side to side, his blood-hound face, his extremely vivid eyes, fixed upon Peggy's face. "Do you really ask the jury to believe that?" he said.

Still Peggy was silent. She seemed to have drooped into something like a faded flower. She said nothing. There was nothing for her to say.

And in the silence the calm, judicial voice of the President, full of commiseration—without prejudice one way or the other, nevertheless,—made its demand. "You must answer, Mrs. Admaston," said the judge.

"I don't think my husband knew how fond of me he was," Peggy said.

"If he had known," Sir Robert said, very gently now, and with a little quiver in his voice—"if he had known, don't you think, Mrs. Admaston, he would have been very angry to know how you were situated in Paris?"

Sentence after sentence was wrung from her by torture.

"I think perhaps he might not have liked it," she said in a fainting voice.

The bully came out in Sir Robert's voice. All along the line he was being tremendously successful....

"Perhaps! Would any man like it? Do you think, madam, that you were treating your husband fairly in encouraging this very charming gentleman's attentions?"

Very faint, very slow, very hesitating, and extremely weary, "I did not encourage them," the answer came.

"We shall see. Didn't it make you feel very embarrassed to find yourself sitting up in a strange hotel into the small hours of the morning, with this man making passionate love to you?"

There was a dead silence in the court. Once more the person on the rack had nothing to say.

"Or had this liaison gone too far by this time for you to feel embarrassed?"

Mr. M'Arthur jumped up.

His face blazed with simulated fury. "My lord," he barked, "I protest against these insulting suggestions."

The excited voice of the counsel rather failed of its effect as the judge looked down upon him. "Sir Robert is within his rights, Mr. M'Arthur," he said. "He would not ask these questions without good reason."

Sir Robert Fyffe saw his chance at once. He glanced at the jury; he made a little deprecating motion of his head to the President. "Too good reason, my lord! My duty is not a pleasant one.... Was this the first time, Mrs. Admaston, that you had received Mr. Collingwood in this state of undress—when the rest of the household was asleep?"

Peggy had clasped her hands. She threw them apart with a wild gesture and clutched the rail of the witness-box. "My lord!" she said, "I assure you that nothing has ever taken place between us."

The President gazed at her with calm compassion.

He had heard appeals like this one too often. He was not there to be influenced by emotions, or to be prejudiced by his natural kindness of heart.

He was there to judge.

"You must answer Sir Robert, Mrs. Admaston," he said quietly.

"We used to sit up late sometimes at Lord Ellerdine's and talk," Peggy admitted.

There were murmurs all over the court. Society was interested.

Sir Robert Fyffe leant forward to the solicitor in front of him, said something in an undertone, and then looked up.

"Was that at Lord Ellerdine's place in Yorkshire?"

"Yes."

"When were you last there?"

"About a year ago," Peggy replied.

"Indeed! About a year ago——"

"Hardly a year."

"At anyrate, several months before the Paris trip Mr. Collingwood was sitting up in your room into the small hours of the morning making passionate love to you?"

Mrs. Admaston said nothing at all.

"Is not that so?" the insistent voice inquired.

"There was no harm, Sir Robert," was the hesitating answer.

"No harm! Did Lord Ellerdine know?"

"No."

"Did your husband know?"

"No."

And now into the voice of the great counsel began to creep a note of contempt, which was doubtless perfectly genuine. He had met the woman he was cross-examining in society. He had liked her. But, as every one knew, Sir Robert's own domestic life was one of singular happiness and accord.

It is pretty certain that—having known Admaston and his wife—he was becoming genuinely indignant at what he thought the treachery of the girl.

"Was this another of those perfectly harmless things which you didn't care to tell your husband about?" he said.

"I saw no harm in it," Peggy replied, and in answer to the colder note in Sir Robert's voice her own became stubborn.

"But you would not have liked him to know? Well! You have now admitted that Mr. Collingwood had been making passionate love to you for months before the trip to Paris. We are getting at the truth gradually. I suppose that he made these declarations of love several times at Lord Ellerdine's?"

"I think he spoke to me on two or three occasions," Peggy almost murmured.

"And was this really the first time he declared his love for you?"

"Yes, the first time."

"You are sure?"

"Quite sure."

"And you still went about everywhere with him—but you were careful not to tell your husband the truth?"

"My husband trusted me. I never abused his trust."

As Peggy said this, the foreman of the jury, a plump, shortish, clean-shaved gentleman who in private life was a chemist, looked up with a puzzled expression upon his face.

He thought he detected a ring of real sincerity in the witness's voice which the facts did not seem to justify.

"Was not this an abuse of his trust?" Sir Robert said—perhaps more gravely than he had spoken yet.

"Oh! we can't all be perfect! I don't deny that I flirted," Peggy answered.

Her affectation of lightness went very ill with the weighty, measured accusations of Sir Robert Fyffe.

It struck a jarring note in the court. It did her harm.

"You do not deny that you flirted," Sir Robert said, with a little nod of his head—"and encouraged this man, this very charming companion, to flirt with you?"

"And if I did," she replied, still defiant, "my husband trusted me, and knew that there was nothing in it."

"Mrs. Admaston, if that is true, why were you afraid to talk to him upon the night of the 23rd March, and why did you connive at a deliberate lie on the following day?"

There was a cold and deliberate disgust in Sir Robert's voice, and almost every person there gave a little sympathetic shudder.

But Peggy, brave to the last, still fought on. "I was a fool," she said, with a little shrug of the shoulders, as if the question was of no great moment. "I was a fool. The others thought the thing much worse than it was, and that frightened me. I have told you already that I loathed myself for lying as I did."

Sir Robert knitted his brows for a moment, and then decided on his course of action.

That brilliant brain was never at a loss. Again, after a second's hesitation, the deadly thrust was delivered. It was delivered with such apparent suavity and innocence, with such a relaxation of the hard, accusing note, that the girl in the witness-box was utterly deceived.

"You mean," said Sir Robert, "that though you did not tell your husband everything about your harmless flirtations—your peccadilloes—you never before deliberately lied to shield yourself?"

"Yes," Peggy replied eagerly; "that is what I mean."

"Does it not strike you, Mrs. Admaston, that any one who knew of your previous adventures with Mr. Collingwood, the pleasure you obviously find in his society, and the methods you have adopted to blind your husband to the progress of this innocent friendship, would have good ground for supposing that the accident which brought about the last of this series of innocent and pleasant reunions was in reality not accident, but deliberate design?"

"I see what you mean," she answered; "but whatever any one thought, it was an accident!"

"An accident! Oh, just consider this chapter of accidents! By accident, you and Mr. Collingwood got on to the wrong train at Boulogne; by accident, although the luggage of the whole party was together at Charing Cross Station and Mr. Collingwood was instructed to register it all through to St. Moritz, your luggage and Mr. Collingwood's was not registered—an accident which enabled you to take it on with you upon the Paris train, which you only entered by accident. By accident, Mr. Collingwood seems to have taken for himself and a lady rooms at an hotel in Paris which, but for the accident which took you and him to Paris, could have been of no possible use to him. Do you still ask the jury to believe that your visit to Paris was an accident?"

Sir Robert had a little over-emphasised himself—that is, as far as the witness was concerned,—though his accentuated speech had its effect upon the jury. Peggy herself recognised artifice. When there had been a real note of sincerity in the counsel's voice it had frightened her far more than any rhetoric could.

"Certainly I do," she answered with spirit.

The barrister recognised in a moment that, while he had made an effect upon the court, he had at the same time given new courage to the witness. He was, as all great counsel are, a psychologist of the first order. He responded instantly, and in this duel of two minds—his and Mrs. Admaston's—his keener and more trained intelligence realised exactly what was passing in her thoughts.

"I suggest to you, Mrs. Admaston," he said very briskly, "that you and Mr. Collingwood had planned this trip to Paris—that he took the rooms with your knowledge—that you both missed the train deliberately, and reached Paris in accordance with your preconceived design?"

"And I tell you," Peggy replied, "that all these suggestions are absolutely false."

"Absolutely false?"

Her voice rang out into the court shrill with the long torture of her examination, but passionate with her own certainty of her innocence. "There's not a rag of truth in any of them. You may think you can make black white, and white black, you may hire spies, tamper with railway servants and waiters...."

An instant reproof came from the judge—two words: "Mrs. Admaston!" he said.

She looked up, but hardly heard him.

"... And do all the rest of the degrading work which seems inseparable from this court."

"Mrs. Admaston," the President said again, "you must not speak like that."

All men, even judges, are influenced by circumstance. It is probable that the President would have been far more severe at such an outburst as this, if Mrs. Admaston had not been a millionairess in her own right and the wife of a prominent Cabinet Minister. And it is sure also that, under such circumstances as these, an ordinary woman, without the unconscious consciousness of her financial and social position, would not have dared to do as Peggy did.

Despite the President's admonition, a torrent of half hysterical, wholly indignant words poured from the witness-box.

"And what right have they to treat me like this?" Peggy cried. "Am I to be treated as guilty, merely because I have foolishly courted temptation? I don't know what I have said, I don't know what I shall say before this torture is completed; but I am sensible enough to know that I have no chance in all this farrago of horrible insinuation which twists every little piece of harmless and girlish folly into some vicious and debasing form. I cannot keep quiet under it. I tell you it is all—all—lies—nothing but lies!"

"Now, Mrs. Admaston," Sir Robert said, apparently unmoved by this tirade, "I must ask you to give me your very close attention."

"You must try to be more composed," the President said kindly to Peggy, "if you wish to do yourself justice."

Peggy's white, set face looked straight out before her. She summoned up all her courage to bear the remainder of her torture.

"You still persist," said Sir Robert, "in saying that your trip to Paris resulted from an accident?"

"Emphatically I do," she answered.

Sir Robert looked towards the judge.

"Has your lordship got that document," he said, "which Mr. Admaston identified when he was in the witness-box?"

The President nodded. "That was the anonymous letter received by Miss Admaston—Mr. Admaston's aunt,—was it not, and produced by her on subpœna yesterday? Yes. I have it here in the envelope."

"Perhaps your lordship will allow the witness to look at the envelope."

Mr. M'Arthur jumped up. "My lord," he said, "I submit again that nothing can make this letter evidence."

"And you are quite right, Mr. M'Arthur," the judge answered. "But at present Sir Robert is not suggesting that it is evidence—Usher," he continued, "please hand this to the witness."

"Look at that envelope," Sir Robert continued. "You will see that it is dated March 23rd, and the postmark shows that it was collected at 10.30 a.m. Now, you persist in saying that at the time that letter was posted nothing was further from your mind than that you would be staying the night in Paris."

"I have already said so," Peggy answered.

"And do you say so still?"

"Of course I do," she answered tartly.

"We shall see," Sir Robert Fyffe rapped out. "The letter is addressed to Miss Admaston—is it not? And Mr. Admaston has sworn that she brought it to him to the House of Commons just after three o'clock on the same day. Is Miss Admaston a friend of yours?"

"I don't think she altogether approves of me," Peggy answered.

"You know that Mr. Admaston has sworn that it was the information contained in that letter which determined him to have you watched in Boulogne and in Paris?"

"Yes, I know."

"And at the time that letter was written, no one could possibly have known that you were going to spend the night in Paris or miss the train at Boulogne?"

"Of course they couldn't."

"May I take it, therefore," Sir Robert continued, "that you believed your husband when he says that that letter was in his hands soon after three o'clock—long before you even reach Folkestone?"

"I believe my husband implicitly," Peggy said, and there was a little quaver in her voice.

"Do you recognise the handwriting?" Sir Robert asked.

"I have never seen it before," she answered.

The judge looked intently at the K.C. "I don't want to interrupt you, Sir Robert," he said; "but do you know whose handwriting it is?"

"No, my lord," Sir Robert replied. "I am really asking for information."

"It is very curious," said the judge.

"It is, my lord," said Sir Robert. "My learned friend, Mr. Carteret, who is watching the case on behalf of Miss Admaston, informs me that he has had it submitted to every well-known handwriting expert in the United Kingdom, and indeed in Europe."

"And compared with the writing of every person however remotely connected with the parties concerned in this case?"

"He has even had it compared with Mrs. Admaston's, my lord."

"And no doubt with Mr. Collingwood's?" the judge continued.

"Yes," Sir Robert said, "and with Mr. Collingwood's too, my lord—though, I regret to say, with no result."

He turned from the judge to Peggy. "And can't you help us, Mrs. Admaston?" he concluded.

"No, not from the envelope," Peggy answered.

"It is a most peculiar handwriting," the judge observed, leaning back in his seat.

Sir Robert continued his cross-examination. "Now, Mrs. Admaston," he said, "remember that that letter was in the hands of your husband just after three o'clock on 23rd March. Now, will you be so good as to read it?"

"Out loud?"

"Oh no. Read it to yourself."

There was dead silence in the court as with trembling hands the girl took the letter from the envelope and began to read it. All the spectators, those engaged in the case, and several members of the jury knew that the dramatic moment of all had arrived. There had been many dramatic moments, but this was to be the culminating one.

The excitement was intense, and, when Peggy suddenly gave a little cry, there was a low murmur of sound. She cried out loudly, sharply, as if in pain, while the judge and jury regarded her intently. Then she bent forward over the letter again and appeared to re-read it.

Suddenly she lifted her head and turned desperately to the President. "Oh! my lord, this is infamous!" she cried.

Without any hesitation at all Sir Robert made his point.

"Do you still persist, Mrs. Admaston, in your statement that your trip to Paris was the result of an accident?"

Peggy was desperate. "My lord—this letter—it is a trap—it must be—a trap——" she wailed.

"Come, Mrs. Admaston," Sir Robert said very sternly; "can you still keep up this farce, this hypocritical farce?"

Suddenly Collingwood jumped up from his place. "My lord, I protest!" he said, in a voice which trembled with indignation.

The judge gave him a keen look as he subsided, muttering to himself.

"You will have an opportunity to-morrow," the judge said, "of showing your sympathy."

"Now, madam, having read that letter——" Sir Robert resumed.

The foreman of the jury rose. "My lord," he said, "the jury would like to see that letter."

"What do you say, Mr. M'Arthur and Mr. Menzies?" asked the judge.

"I can see no purpose in keeping it out any longer, my lord," Mr. M'Arthur answered, while Mr. Menzies said that any mischief which it might do had been done already.

The President seemed to approve. "I think you are right," he said. "Usher, give me the letter."

The letter was handed up again to the bench, and, adjusting his pince-nez, the judge proceeded to read it.

"Listen, gentlemen," he said, "and I will read it to you. The importance of this letter, gentlemen, which, as you have seen, has so terribly upset this poor lady, is that it was clearly written before 10.30 on the morning of the 23rd March, and was in the hands of Mr. Admaston long before Mrs. Admaston and her friends reached Folkestone—let alone Boulogne. The letter is dated March 23rd, and it is unsigned. Now, gentlemen, an anonymous letter is open to grave suspicion, but in the peculiar circumstances of this case the fact of its being anonymous makes no difference. If any one, other than the respondent and co-respondent, knew that they were going to stay in Paris on the night of the 23rd, and knew that before they started, it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the fact. I will now read the letter:—

"'Mrs. Admaston will be staying at Paris to-night alone with Mr. Collingwood. They have arranged to get separated from Lord Ellerdine and Lady Attwill at Boulogne and to stay the night together at the Hôtel des Tuileries. If Mr. Admaston does not believe this, let him telephone the hotel to-night.'

Mr. Carteret," the judge concluded, "were any other letters in this strange handwriting received by Miss Admaston?"

"One other, my lord, three days ago," said Mr. Carteret.

"I should like to see it," said the President.

The second letter was handed up to him, and he read it through carefully.

"It is all very mysterious," he said, shaking his head. "I think, gentlemen, that you had better hear it. It is as follows:—

"'Please destroy the other letter and this, and save an old servant who honours the family from the anger of Mrs. Admaston.'"

The judge paused, carefully scrutinising the letter; then he took up an ivory reading-glass and looked at the letter through the magnifying lens.

"Am I right, Mr. Carteret," he said, "in my view that this letter has been blotted and not allowed to dry?"

Mr. Carteret leant over and had a hurried conversation with his handwriting expert. "I am instructed that there is no doubt as to that, my lord," he said, looking up.

"I should much like to see that blotting-paper," the President remarked.

"Blotting-paper!" said Sir Robert Fyffe. "So should we all, my lord." Then he rose to his feet. "Now, Mrs. Admaston, having read this letter, do you still dare to repeat that until you had the misfortune to miss the train at Boulogne you had no intention of spending the night in Paris with Mr. Collingwood?"

Peggy did not answer.

She stared at the letter upon the judge's desk as if fascinated by it.

"My lord and the jury are waiting for an answer," Sir Robert repeated. "Come, madam."

"And what answer can I give?" the tortured girl said faintly.

Sir Robert was showing her no mercy now. "The truth, madam, if you can," he said.

"The truth!" she answered. "What is the truth to you? It's not the truth you want. It's me—my very soul—that's what you want! Not to wring the truth out of me, but just so much of it as will serve your ends!"

"Mrs. Admaston," the President said compassionately, but with emphasis, "these outbursts do not assist your case."

"My case!" Peggy cried helplessly. "My lord, who will believe me in the face of this lying letter? It is a trap—a trap, I say! I have been hunted and hounded into it. I am not surprised now that innocent women in hundreds let their cases go by default rather than face the humiliation and torture of this awful place."

"Madam, I must insist upon an answer," Sir Robert said relentlessly.

"What am I to answer?" she cried again, wringing her hands with a terribly piteous gesture.

"If you ask me, Mrs. Admaston, let me advise you to answer the truth."

"The truth?"

"Yes, the truth—that this trip to Paris was all arranged between you and your lover"—his voice sank and became deeply impressive; "that at the very moment in which your husband was trying to reach you upon the telephone you were in that lover's arms?"

"It is a lie!" she said despairingly.

"The telephone bell rang several times before it was answered, did it not?"

"Yes, but——"

Sir Robert cut her short. "I suggest to you that even then you were in your lover's arms?" he said with bitter scorn.

"It is a lie!" Peggy answered once more.

"Then, Mrs. Admaston, and for the last time, I press for an answer. Do you still insist that you and your lover——"

She didn't allow him to finish his sentence. Desperate as she was, the hot words poured from her in a cataract of sound.

"How dare you suggest that he is my lover!" she cried. "I tell you that I have never loved him!—never—never—never—never! If I had loved him do you think that I would be here now? For months and months he has begged and entreated me to let my husband divorce me so that I could marry him. If I had loved him, do you think that I would have faced this horrible place? I have never loved him. I have been foolish—I have played with fire—I have loved his admiration. I did not know that the law—man's law—made no difference between the opportunity to do wrong and the wrong itself. I know now. Some day men who know women will make other laws—some of us must have our lives broken first. In the face of that letter and the evidence, no man would ever believe me, whatever I say; but I swear before God that it was all an accident—our being in Paris. I swear that I meant no harm by all my little lies. I swear I have done nothing wrong—nothing; but no one will believe me now—no one." Her voice sank and dropped, and she ended her outburst with a deep moan of pain.

"I think we will adjourn now," said the President, and there was pain in his voice also.

He gathered up the papers before him on his desk and rose. The court rose also.

There was an immediate hum and bustle, which broke out into the loud murmurs of subdued conversation as the judge left his seat and disappeared through the door at the back.

Peggy Admaston, wringing her hands, her face a white wedge of anguish, the pallor dreadfully accentuated by the burnished masses of her dark hair, almost stumbled down the steps of the witness-box. Mr. M'Arthur and her solicitor—a little confused knot of people, indeed—hastened up to her, and with a grim face Sir Robert Fyffe, not looking in the girl's direction, arranged his papers and spoke earnestly to his junior.

The scene was one of indescribable excitement.

It was as though a thunderbolt had fallen, and people looked at each other with pale, questioning faces.

The hum died down for an instant, as the weeping woman was led gently from the court.

Then it recommenced louder than ever, mingled with the shuffling of innumerable feet.

---

CHAPTER VII

Directly the President had risen, Society streamed out into the great hall of the Law Courts.

Innumerable motor broughams and private carriages were waiting in Fleet Street, and despite the dullness of the afternoon the eager photographers of the illustrated papers were waiting to get snap-shots of celebrated people as they passed from the sordid theatre of Court No. II. en route for afternoon tea and scandal.

Henry Passhe had an engagement, and, saying good-bye to Colonel Adams, hurried away. The other remained in the big central hall for a moment or two looking round to see if he could find an acquaintance.

To him, as he stood there, came Lord Ellerdine and struck him on the shoulder.

"Hullo, Adams!" he said, in a voice which was very subdued. "Thought I saw you in court. Been watching this dreadful business?"

Colonel Adams nodded. "Yes, Ellerdine," he said. "Henry Passhe brought me. He much wanted to come. I hesitated whether I should go or not, and now I am very sorry I did. To see a charming little woman like Mrs. Admaston tortured—that isn't very pleasant."

The other thrust his arm into the colonel's. "Damned dreadful, isn't it?" he said in an agitated voice. "Well, look here, let's get out of this. What are you going to do?"

"I have nothing particular to do at present; but why do you ask, Ellerdine?"

"Look here," Lord Ellerdine replied—"we can't talk here, but I have got an idea." His voice glowed with pride as he said it. "I haven't mentioned it to a soul, and I don't want to mention it to any one concerned in the case. Upon my soul, Adams, it is a godsend to have met you. I want to hear what you think. Are you game to listen?"

Adams nodded. He liked Lord Ellerdine, as everybody did, though he had no higher opinion of that gentleman's intelligence than the rest of the world.

"Quite at your service, Ellerdine," he answered; "and if your idea is one that may possibly help Mrs. Admaston, I shall be more pleased still."

"Of course it is," Lord Ellerdine answered. "Well, let's go and talk it over. It is impossible in this infernal rush."

"All right," Colonel Adams replied, "Come to the Cocoa Tree, or, if you like, I will come with you to White's."

Lord Ellerdine shook his head. "We will have some tea," he said. "But I don't want to go west now until I have talked this idea of mine over with you. If you agree that there is anything in it, then we should only have to come back to this part of the world again. Can't we get a cup of tea somewhere about here?"

By this time the two men had walked outside the Law Courts and were standing among the motley crowd which was pouring out of the great central doorway and also the side approaches to the public galleries and courts.

They looked around them. Both of them were absolutely at sea in this part of London.

"Tell you what," Ellerdine said suddenly: "I have got another idea. Let's go to an A.B.C.—what?"

"What do you mean?" Adams replied.

"Why," Lord Ellerdine answered, "the A.B.C. you know, where clerks and people have tea. There are always lots of them in every street, I believe."

They turned eastwards and began to walk slowly down Fleet Street.

"Ellerdine," Colonel Adams exclaimed bitterly, "look at this!"

The pavements were lined with news-venders displaying great contents bills of the evening papers:

"Mrs. Admaston on the Rack"; "Society Lady's Admissions"; and in a violently Radical sheet, "Society Butterfly Examined."

Lord Ellerdine saw the placards also. "Sickening, isn't it?" he said, with a real note of pain in his voice. "Poor little Peggy! Poor little girl! I would have done anything to stop it, Adams; and in half an hour—these newspaper fellows are so damned clever—in half an hour there'll be all about the last scene, the letter and all that. By the time we get back to town"—Lord Ellerdine didn't imagine that he was really in London at the moment,—"by the time we get back to town it will be in all the clubs just as it has come over the tape machines for the last two hours, only with further details—how Peggy looked and all that. Sickening!"

Colonel Adams agreed. He did not in the least know what his rather fatuous friend was about to propose or had in his mind; but he was, at anyrate, glad of his companionship, weary and unhappy as he felt at the terrible spectacle which he had found almost impossible to endure.

"I could kill that man Robert Fyffe," he said savagely as they walked slowly eastwards. "Great, big, damned bully, I call him."

"Well, I know him," Ellerdine replied; "and really, Adams, he is quite a decent chap in private life. It is his job, you know, and he has got to do it as well as he can. I believe he gets about a hundred a day or more for a case like this."

"Filthy cruelty, I call it," Adams answered, "whether he is a decent chap or not. To be paid—to earn your living, by Gad!—to torture men and women like that seems to me a low way of earning your bread-and-butter."

"Perhaps it is," the other replied. "At the same time, Adams, it might be said of your job too. That Afghan business, when there was no quarter, that you were in: there were a whole lot of sentimentalists in the Radical press that howled and held you up to execration as a sort of Pontius Pilate with a flavour of Nero, at home. You were out there doing the work. I was home and read the papers—you didn't. Bally monster, they called you—what?"

"Damn all newspaper writers!" the old white-haired colonel growled. "But I say, Ellerdine, what about this cup of tea?"

Lord Ellerdine looked round anxiously, and then his face lighted up. "Here's an A.B.C.," he said, pointing to some adjacent windows covered with letters in white enamel and displaying buns and pastry.

"How will this do, old chap?"

The soldier nodded, and together the two men entered the shop.

"What do we do now?" Ellerdine said, looking round him with some perplexity. "By Jove! there's a pretty girl."

One of the waitresses, realising suddenly that the two gentlemen who had just entered were quite unaccustomed to the ways of the establishment, and having one of her tables vacant, hurried up to them.

"Tea?" she said engagingly.

"That's just it, my dear," said Lord Ellerdine, with a pleased smile. "Now, you show us all the ropes, will you?"

"Come this way," said the pretty waitress, with an engaging little toss of her head and a consciousness of something pleasantly unusual. She led them to a little round-topped marble table where two cheap cane chairs were waiting, upon which Lord Ellerdine and Colonel Adams seated themselves.

"Tea, I think you said?" said the waitress to Lord Ellerdine, whom she obviously found the most sympathetic of the pair.

The ex-diplomatist nodded. "But we must have something to eat—what? Well, my dear, we will leave it to you. Carte blanche—what?"

"Now look here, Adams," Lord Ellerdine said, "what I want to tell you is this. Of course, I am tremendously interested in this case. I am mixed up in it considerably, and also I am a great friend of Peggy's—one of her oldest friends. You know her too, though not as well as I do, and you know what a charming little woman she is. I would do anything to save her if I could, and I have got an idea! Now, some time ago," Lord Ellerdine continued, "a silly Johnny—a secretary it was—forged my name. It was on a cheque. There was considerable difficulty in finding out who was the actual culprit, as owing to the circumstances there were several people who might have done it. My solicitors told me that the only way to really find out was to go to a handwriting expert. I didn't know what that was until they explained, but it seems there are Johnnies who make a regular profession of studying people's writing."

"Are there, by Jove!" said the colonel, much interested.

"Yes; and just at that time—it was some two years ago—the king and skipper of the whole lot had come over from America and established a branch in London. His name is William Q. Devereux."

"Is it, by Jove!" said the colonel again.

Ellerdine nodded. "Odd," he said, "but true, parole d'honneur. He started an office in London to help all the commercial Johnnies in the city, and so I went to him with my papers; and I am damned if the chap didn't find out who forged my name in about an hour, and we had him nailed that same evening. Cost me a tenner, that's all."

Colonel Adams nodded, looking with some trepidation at the pile of rather too luscious-looking pastry which had by now been set upon the table.

"I don't think I will venture," he said to himself; and then to Ellerdine, "Well, go on, Ellerdine."

"Now, in my pocket," Lord Ellerdine continued, "I have got exact photographs and tracings of the letters which have made such a fuss this afternoon. My idea, Adams, is that you and I—if you have time, that is—should go down into the City and see this expert chap and see if he can throw some light on the situation. They have tried all the experts in London on Peggy's case, but they don't seem to know about my American friend. I believe in him. He is one of the most astute people going. What do you say to trying him—for poor little Peggy's sake?"

"Excellent idea, by Jove!" the other answered. "You've got his address, of course?"

"Oh yes," Lord Ellerdine replied; "it's in Coleman Street, E.C. Now, I wonder if you would mind going down with me and seeing what he has got to say?"

"Not in the least," Colonel Adams answered. "In fact, I shall be tremendously interested. I'd do a good deal more than that, my dear Ellerdine, if I could, to help Mrs. Admaston in any way."

"Very well, then," said the peer. "We'll just finish our tea, and pay that pretty-looking girl and take a taxi at once."

In five minutes they had dismissed the cab and were being carried in a lift to the third floor of a big block of buildings in Coleman Street.

The door of Mr. Devereux's office was marked "Enter," and the newcomers found themselves in a small but comfortably furnished room. At a round polished table, on which there was a typewriting machine, sat a young lady, who was reading a novel of Miss Marie Corelli's.

"Mr. Devereux is in," she said in answer to their queries, "but he is just about to leave. However, I will take your name and see if he can see you."

Some people would have been annoyed at this fashion of greeting, but to the two simple gentlemen in question it seemed quite right and proper that such a rare bird as an American handwriting expert should be fenced round with a certain ritual.

"Tell Mr. Devereux," said Lord Ellerdine, "that Lord Ellerdine is here. Mr. Devereux knows me."

Unlike the young person in the café, the young lady in the office did not seem at all impressed, but languidly sauntered through the door which led to the inner room. She came back much more quickly than she had entered. "Mr. Devereux begs that you will step in," she said, and once more fell to her enthralling romance as the door closed behind the visitors.

Mr. Devereux was a well-dressed, trim young American with a hard, clean-shaved face. His manner was brisk, business-like, and deferential, and his whole appearance suggested energy and capability.

Upon his large leather-covered writing-table were various appliances used in his business.

One saw a microscope of some peculiar construction. There were a variety of small lenses and reading-glasses, together with various instruments of shining steel for measuring, with extreme accuracy, the length of a letter or a line.

There was also an enlarging camera upon a shelf by the window, and a door in one corner of the place was marked "Dark room."

"Glad to see you again, my lord," said Mr. Devereux. "Not a forgery case this time, I hope?"

"Not a bit of it," Lord Ellerdine replied, shaking hands with the expert. "Glad to see you, Mr. Devereux. No; it is something far more important than a cheque for fifty pounds. It is to do with the Admaston divorce case."

Mr. Devereux started. His face became almost ferret-like in its intentness, while he said nasally, but with suppressed eagerness in his voice, "I guess this is a bit of luck. I have just seen this evening's paper, and of course I have followed the case with great interest from first to last. I know without any possibility of doubt that all my brother experts in London have been consulted. And from the first it has rather hurt me that nobody had come to me, because I do claim——"

Lord Ellerdine interrupted him. "I know, I know," he said; "there is no one that can touch you, Mr. Devereux. But probably, you see——" He hesitated in his effort to soothe the somewhat wounded feelings of the expert.

Colonel Adams came to the rescue. "Well, Mr. Devereux," he said, "here we are, and we have got something very important on which to ask your opinion."

The expert became all attention once more. "What is it?" he said briefly.

Lord Ellerdine put his hand in the breast-pocket of his coat and withdrew a long envelope full of papers.

"I have here," he said, "exact photographs and tracings—everything that you will probably find needful, in fact—of the two letters which you have just been reading about in the evening paper, and which have caused such a tremendous sensation this afternoon. It seems at the moment that Mrs. Admaston has absolutely lost her case. To all outward appearances these letters have ruined her. At the same time, I am certain that she knew nothing about them, and that Mr. Collingwood knew nothing about them either. You follow me?"

Lord Ellerdine had never been so concise and explanatory before, but the occasion had come, and he had risen to it.

"I follow you perfectly," said the expert.

"Very well, then," Lord Ellerdine said; "here are the letters, and I want you to tell me what you think about them."

He gave the envelope to the expert, who withdrew the papers it contained and spread them upon the table.

He began to study them with grave attention. The two men sat in the comfortable chairs he had indicated to them.

"My lord," said the expert, looking up suddenly, "I guess you won't realise the necessity of it, but I should very much like to be left alone for say twenty minutes. I can think better when I am alone, and I gather you want an immediate opinion?"

"We do," Lord Ellerdine replied. "All right; we will go, and come back in half an hour or so."

The two gentlemen re-entered the waiting-room.

"Well, my dear," said Lord Ellerdine briskly to the young lady, "we are put out here while Mr. Devereux examines some papers I have brought in; and he tells us that we are to talk to you—what?"

The young lady put down her volume. "Frightfully cold," she said, "isn't it?" And for the next half-hour Lord Ellerdine and Colonel Adams and this very superior young lady conversed with a studied propriety which certainly did not obtain in the drawing-rooms where the two gentlemen were accustomed to visit.

At the end of that time the door opened and the keen-faced American came out.

He was rubbing his hands briskly as though pleased with himself. "Guess I have got something for you, at anyrate," he said, "if you will come in here."

They re-entered the inner room, and Devereux began. "I can tell you one thing," he said, "and one thing only."

Lord Ellerdine was trembling with excitement. "What is it?" he said breathlessly. "Will it help?"

"It may," the expert replied; "but at anyrate it is this. Those two letters were written by some one who can write with the left hand as well as with the right. There is not the slightest doubt about it, and I don't care what any of your darned English experts may say."

Lord Ellerdine's face fell. "With the left hand?" he asked vaguely.

The expert nodded. "I will explain to you," he said, pulling a large book of manuscripts towards him; and illustrating his theory with swift, decisive movements upon a blank sheet of paper, he showed the two men exactly the reasons for his diagnosis.

"Now, my lord," he said, when he had finished and made certain that both of them thoroughly understood—"now, my lord, all you have to do is to find the person who writes with his or her left hand and could have possibly been sufficiently acquainted with the facts to produce those two letters. When that is done you will have the person."

Lord Ellerdine was considerably disappointed. He had imagined that by some occult means the expert would have been immediately able to name the writer of the letters. He strove to conceal what he felt, however; and after paying Mr. Devereux's fee the two men left the building.

"It isn't much," Lord Ellerdine said, as they got into a cab and drove rapidly towards the West End. "It isn't much, but it is something. I will drop you at your club—Cocoa Tree, isn't it?—and then drive straight to Collingwood's solicitors to find out where he is. It is not much, but it is something," he repeated rather vaguely to himself; and then both men became occupied with their own thoughts and were silent.

---

CHAPTER VIII

The drawing-room of Mrs. Admaston's house in St. James's was thought by many people to be one of the most delightful rooms in town.

The Morris and æsthetic conventions were entirely ignored in it. There were no soft greys or greens, no patterns of pomegranates, no brown and pleasing sombreness. The room expressed Peggy herself, and was designed entirely by her.

It was large, panelled entirely in white with sparse gilding, and the ceiling was white also, though slightly different in tone. The very few pictures which hung upon the walls were all of the gay Watteau school, and there were some fans painted on silk and framed by Charles Conder.

The furniture was not obtrusive. It was in the light style of the Second Empire, fragile and delicate in appearance, but strong and comfortable enough in experience.

The room was essentially a summer room, and yet one could see that even in winter time it would strike a note of warmth, hospitality, and comfort.

For, with great wisdom, Peggy had made concessions. While the drawing-room still preserved its gay French air, there was, nevertheless, a huge open hearth on which, in winter, logs and coal glowed redly. Now, it was filled with great bunches of the simple pink foxglove.

Standing out from the fireplace, at right angles to the wall, was a large sofa of blue linen; and there was also a big writing-table with a pleasant furniture of chased silver upon it.

This room in the luxurious house was called the "drawing-room," but it was not really that. It was, in fact, Mrs. Admaston's own particular room—she hated the word boudoir. The big reception-rooms had no such intimate and pleasant aspect—splendid as they were—as this.

The flowers bloomed on the hearth, the long dull-green curtains had not yet veiled the warm outside evening, when a footman entered and flung open the two big doors which led into this delightful place.

The man stood waiting with one arm stretched out upon one leaf of the door.

Mrs. Admaston and Lady Attwill entered, and Pauline followed them.

"Bring some tea at once," Pauline said in a low voice to the footman.

Then she turned to Peggy. "Madame," she said in a voice full of pain, "do compose yourself. You will be very ill if you go on like this."

Peggy's face was dangerously flushed. Her eyes glittered, her hands clasped and unclasped themselves.

"That letter!" she cried. "That fiendish letter! Who could have sent it? What devil planned that trap?"

Lady Attwill shrugged her shoulders. "Anonymous—take no notice," she said.

Peggy turned on her like a whirlwind. "Don't be absurd, Alice!" she cried. "It was sent before we left London. Who knew we should go to Paris? Who knew that we should stay at the Tuileries?"

Pauline was hovering round her mistress with a face that was all anxiety, with hands that trembled to touch and soothe. "Remember, madame," she said, "it was sent to your aunt. Very funny that! She has never liked you, that grim old lady!"

"Why did she dislike me?" Peggy said petulantly.

"Madame, you were gay, happy—like sunbeams. Your old aunt lived in the shadows. She is a dour old maid."

"I don't see what she has to do with it," Peggy answered. "The letter was written by some one who knew that we were going to stay in Paris, and even where we were going to stay."

Lady Attwill went up to the fireplace and sank down upon the sofa of blue linen.

In her smart afternoon costume of grey silk, and a large straw hat upon which the flowers were amethyst and purple, she made a perfect colour-harmony as she sat.

"Why was it sent to her?" Lady Attwill asked.

Peggy sighed. "I don't know, except that she was the one to poison George's mind. Without her he would probably have ignored it. But who was it who knew that we should be in Paris that night? No one imagines that I knew or—Pauline. Then there's Dicky—that's absurd."

Peggy's face seemed to have grown older. The terrible ordeal that she had undergone had left vivid traces upon it. It was not a frightened face—it was the face of one who had been agonised, but it was also a face of great perplexity.

Pauline interposed. "Madame," she said, "if you did not know that you would be staying at Paris that night, the writer of that letter must be some one who did know, and who planned this trick to compromise you. There are only two who could have known. Madame—I do not like...."

In the maid's voice the old, harsh Breton determination had flashed out. She turned towards Lady Attwill, and her whole voice and bearing were a challenge.

Her head was pushed a little forward, moving from side to side like a snake about to strike; unconsciously her arms were set akimbo.

Lady Attwill looked languidly at the angry woman. "You need have no delicacy, Pauline," she said. "Ca fait rien, expliquez-vous. Tiens! What you want to say is that the letter was written by Mr. Collingwood or by myself—or by somebody or other procured by us to do it. C'est votre idée, n'est-ce pas?"

The woman, in her way—in her languid way—was defiant as the old Breton bonne herself.

Peggy rose and began to walk up and down the room. She had been sitting almost opposite Lady Attwill, but now there seemed to be hesitation and perplexity, not only in her voice, but in her whole attitude.

"But you could not have done it, Alice," she said. "The luggage, don't you know—it was Colling who saw that it was not registered."

"That is only what the porter says," Alice Attwill answered grimly.

"Oh, my dear," Peggy replied, "it is only too obviously true. Pauline saw through it the same night. Didn't you think it was very funny?"

Lady Attwill fell immediately into the suggestion.

"Well, dear," she said, "Dicky and I were a little bit suspicious, since you put it to me; but I hardly liked to suggest——"

Peggy turned from both of them and went up to the piano, standing by it and drumming upon it with her gloved fingers. "Colling!" she muttered. "It's impossible! And yet just now when I left the court I could not think how else it could have been done."

She wheeled round. "Alice," she said, "do you think it could have been Colling? Do you? What reason could he have had?"

Alice Attwill's hands were clasped upon her knee. She was bending forward, nodding her head slightly from time to time, and had an almost judicial pose.

She appeared to be thinking. "My dear Peggy," she said at length, "I can see plenty of reasons. After all, we know that Colling won't be sorry if Admaston gets his divorce."

"I beg miladi's pardon," Pauline broke in, "but I do not think that is so."

"C'est bien possible," Lady Attwill replied to the maid. And then, looking at Peggy, "I am sure I can't imagine Mr. Collingwood doing such a thing. I am the last person to make mischief."

She rose as she spoke and walked towards the door. "Come along, Peggy," she said; "you must get your things off—you've had such a horrible day."

Peggy looked at her wildly. She hardly seemed to hear what she was saying.

"No—no—let me think—I must think!" she cried, and there was a rising note of hysteria in her voice.

"Well," Lady Attwill said calmly, "I must get out of my things, at anyrate." Then she spoke with something which sounded like affection in her voice.

"Peggy," she said, "you really must lie down and rest—I shall be down in a few minutes."

With a bright smile she took her parasol and left the room.

Then Peggy let herself go.

"Oh! How cruel it is!" she cried, raging up and down the drawing-room. "They have taken all the joy out of my life! I feel as if they had burnt the damning letter in scarlet upon my breast—branded by law, divorce-court law! Oh, the ignominy, the shame of it all—the shame! It is barbarous! To hold a woman up and torture her before a pruriently minded crowd whether she is guilty or not! Am I guilty because I can't prove that I am innocent?"

The old maid ran up to Peggy and caught her firmly by the arms, pressing her down into a chair.

"Rest! rest!" she said, with the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Mignon, you will break my heart if you go on like this. You are innocent; I stake my soul on that. Wait—wait till to-morrow when I am witness. I will tell them!"

Peggy's arms went round the old maid's neck and she drew the gnarled face to hers. "Pauline," she said, "dear Pauline! They will torture you as they did me. It is useless. Sir Robert Fyffe will make you say just what he wants. It is not justice that triumphs in the end—it is intellect that damns. Pauline, do you think that Mr. Collingwood knew that we should be in Paris that night, and that he wrote the letter?"

Pauline kissed her. "I think, madame," she said, "that M. Collingwood knew that we should be in Paris. But I am certain he did not write that letter. M. Collingwood might have done a very foolish thing, thinking that you loved him—but he is a gentleman."

"But if he did not write it—then you think that Lady Attwill?..."

"Comme vous voulez? If it is not M. Collingwood, madame, it must be Lady Attwill."

"But why should she have done such a fiendish thing?"

"She has never forgiven you for marrying Mr. Admaston. Did I not tell you, madame? Did I not say that to you in Paris?"

Peggy nodded. "Yes, Pauline," she replied; "but I can't believe you. She has seen my misery. No, Pauline, it is impossible!"

"Madame, it is not impossible. She can only conquer by your misery."

Peggy jumped up from the sofa, her whole body shaking, her face aflame with righteous anger. "Pauline!" she said in a shrill voice, "I must find out who wrote that letter."

"Yes, madame," the old maid replied, with a despairing gesture of her hands; "but how will you do it?"

"I shall employ the same weapons to find out that as they have brought against me. The law, the officers, the craft and cunning of the whole machine. I am very rich, Pauline, quite apart from my husband—as you know very well; but, if it cost me every penny I had, I would spend it all, if necessary, to find out who wrote that letter."

The door opened and two footmen came in with the tea equipage. Peggy looked up at them, annoyed at the interruption; then her eye fell upon the windows at the end of the room which led upon a long, secluded terrace outside the drawing-room. It was called the "terrace lounge."

"Not here," she said impatiently; "on the terrace."

The men took the table through the windows, pulling aside the curtains which half veiled the view beyond.

"I'll rest and think, Pauline," Peggy said. "I can always think in that old Sheraton chair on the terrace."

"But if M. Collingwood calls?" Pauline asked.

"Why should he call?" Peggy said. "I see no reason."

"He telephoned asking if you would see him," the maid replied.

"Ah!" Peggy said, with a sudden note of resolve.

It frightened the faithful Breton maid. "Don't see him, madame!" she cried. "Rest!"

"No rest for us yet, Pauline.... I will see him. I must see him. Let him be shown in here. Tell me as soon as he comes."

She turned and went through one of the windows just as the two men-servants came out of the other, having arranged the things for tea.

"When M. Collingwood comes," Pauline said, "show him in here."

The first footman bowed. Pauline's word was law in this house; and, though it was bitterly resented below-stairs that she, a servant herself, should have such authority, no one ventured to dispute it.

At the far end of the drawing-room—not the end where the curtained windows led out on to the terrace lounge—there was a tall screen of carved teakwood from Benares. Behind it upon a little table stood a telephone. The Admastons—husband and wife—had always made a great point of using the telephone. Peggy herself, with her impulsive moods, found it most convenient, and insisted upon having one in any room that she habitually used.

Pauline, her face wrinkled in thought, strolled mechanically to this corner of the room and gazed down upon the glittering little machine of ebony and silver with a frown of dislike. She was thinking of Collingwood and his message, and a dull resentment glowed in her brain at these mechanical facilities of life.

There were no telephones in Pont-Aven when she was a girl in the ancient Breton town, and these things seemed to her part and parcel of the hot, feverish, and hurried life in which her beloved mistress was suffering so greatly.

The old bonne's face, kindly and sweet enough when it wore its ordinary expression, was now mocking and malevolent as she stared at the table. Suddenly she stiffened, raised her head, and listened intently.

She had heard the door of the drawing-room open and close quietly, and there came a rustle of silk skirts.

Lady Attwill had glided quietly into the room and stepped up to the big writing-table at which Peggy conducted most of her correspondence.

The maid stepped out from behind the screen, her eyes shining curiously. "Can I do anything for madame?" she asked. "Miladi a oublié quelque chose, n'est-ce pas?"

The tall, slim woman seemed strangely confused. Her face was a little flushed, her glance at Pauline distinctly uneasy.

She made an exclamation in French, paused to think, and then answered Pauline in English.

"I thought I left my bag down here," she said lamely.

Without troubling to disguise the suspicion and hostility in her voice, and with a slightly sneering note of triumph in it, as if she was pleased at Alice Attwill's confusion, Pauline made a little mocking bow.

"Madame had her bag in her hand when she went upstairs. But I will ring and ask." She went towards the nearest bell-push.

"No! no!" Lady Attwill answered; "please don't trouble. I must be mistaken."

Without a backward glance she almost hurried from the room.

Pauline's face was now extraordinarily watchful and alert. All the peasant cunning flashed out upon it. Any one who has seen the wives and daughters of the small Breton farmers selling a cow or a pony on market-day in some old-world town has seen this cautious, watchful look. One can see it even on the face and in the eyes of a pointer when birds are near: it is of the soil, primeval, part of the eternal hidden warfare of life.

"Yes, perhaps madame is mistaken," the woman said to herself with an ugly grin.

She walked up to the writing-table and looked down upon it thoughtfully.

Suddenly something seemed to strike her and she stretched out her hand to open the great blotter of Nile-green leather, bordered with silver, when the telephone bell rang sharply out into the drawing-room.

She hurried to the telephone. "Who is it?" she said. "What? Yes, this is Admaston House—yes. She is in. Who is it? Yes, sir."

Still holding the receiver in her hand, the woman staggered back from the mouthpiece. She began to tremble violently. Her face became crimson with excitement.

"Oh, sir! she is...."

And now Pauline burst out crying. The tears ran down her cheeks, her old mouth trembled, she seemed upon the point of a breakdown.

"Oh, sir!" she cried again, "she has gone out upon the terrace, and is resting. Monsieur, I can hardly speak to you! Your wife is nearly mad, monsieur! Monsieur, she is innocent—on my soul!"

Her face became intensely eager. "Yes," she sobbed, "come. Yes, by the gate leading from the Park. You have the key. No. Yes, come; I will promise."

With hands that shook terribly, Pauline replaced the receiver on the bracket and came round from behind the Indian screen, walking towards the door. She had not got within three paces of it when it was flung open and the footman announced "Mr. Collingwood."

Roderick Collingwood entered, spruce, débonnaire as ever, but showing in his face traces of the ordeal he was passing through.

"Hullo, Pauline; where is madame?" he said.

"Madame is resting," the maid said, with distinct hostility.

"Out upon the terrace?" he answered, moving towards the windows.

Pauline made a swift movement and placed herself between him and the curtains.

"No; I think she is in her room, monsieur. Please wait here."

Collingwood looked at Pauline in some surprise. He seemed hurt. "What is the matter, Pauline?" he said.

"Nothing is the matter, sir. Would you like to see the news?"

She handed him the evening paper from the writing-table. "I will tell madame," she said, and hurried from the room—well knowing that there was another door from the hall by which the terrace could be reached.

Collingwood picked up the paper, opened it, and eagerly scanned the report of the day's proceedings. Then he flung it down with an oath just as a footman entered the room. "Lord Ellerdine wishes to speak to you, sir," said the footman.

"Is he here?" Collingwood replied.

"Yes, sir."

"Show him up at once."

In a moment or two more Lord Ellerdine, looking flurried and hot, entered the drawing-room.

His hat was in his hand, and he was wearing a light grey overcoat.

"My dear Dicky," Collingwood said, "what on earth brings you here?"

Collingwood had risen and strolled over to the big settee of blue linen. He sat down upon it calmly.

"I wanted to ask you something," Lord Ellerdine said in a rather unsteady voice; "so I went round to your solicitors' office, and they told me that I should find you here."

"Well, what is it?" Collingwood asked imperturbably.

"I say, Colling—do you write with your left hand?"

The other made a movement of impatience. "My dear Dicky," he said irritably, "what the devil?..."

"But do you?" Ellerdine insisted.

"Of course I don't," Collingwood answered shortly.

"I thought as much," said Lord Ellerdine, with a sigh of relief.

"You did, did you?" Collingwood replied, with a slight smile. "What is the game, Dicky?"

"It's not a game, Colling; it's dead serious," said the ex-diplomatist.

"Why, Dicky, what's up?"

"You remember some time ago when some silly ass forged my name on a cheque?" Lord Ellerdine asked, still flurried and ill at ease.

"Well?"

"Well, I got to know a handwriting expert—an American—a devilish smart fellow. When we left the court just now, and Peggy was thinking pretty rotten things about you, I thought I would go and have a word with him."

Collingwood's languid manner entirely disappeared. He bent forward with a keen, searching look at his friend. "You found him?" he asked.

Ellerdine nodded.

"Well, what does he say?"

"I showed him the photos of the letters," Lord Ellerdine continued, "and then the originals, and he says that they are written by some one who writes easily and fluently with his left hand."

"Left hand! Great Scott! Is he sure?"

"As sure as an American expert can be of anything," the peer returned.

"That's sure enough," Collingwood replied, shrugging his shoulders and rising up from the sofa.

He began to walk up and down the room. "That clears me, at anyrate," he said. "But what the devil can it all mean, Ellerdine?"

Lord Ellerdine had been looking at his friend, pathetically waiting for a word of praise. Now he ventured upon a little fishing remark:

"Mighty good thing I thought of that American chap—don't you think so, Colling?"

Collingwood hardly seemed to hear him. His head was bent forward and he was deep in thought.

"Yes, Dicky, yes. Left hand, eh?"

"Yes," Lord Ellerdine answered, with a plaintive note in his voice. "I think, Colling, I've handled this business with some skill—what?"

"Left hand," the other repeated, in a brown study.

"With some skill, Colling—what? Skill—what?" Lord Ellerdine bleated.

Collingwood looked up at this note in the other's voice. He suddenly realised that the poor gentleman was pining for praise, and began to administer it in the heartiest possible fashion.

He smacked him on the shoulder and his voice became absolutely jovial. "Skill!" he said. "My dear Dicky, it's splendid! Really, you missed your vocation. Diplomacy! Never! You're a detective, Dicky! A sleuth-hound! A regular Sherlock Holmes, don't you know!"

Lord Ellerdine was the happiest man in the three kingdoms at that moment. His little mouth twitched with pleasure. His face beamed like the rising sun. "I say, Colling, do you think so—do you really think so, Colling?"

"Think so!" Collingwood answered, laughing. "I'm sure of it, old chap"; and then, with a sudden, swift transition of manner, "Dicky, look here—have you told Admaston?"

"Not yet," Lord Ellerdine replied. "George Admaston is hard hit, devilish hard hit. He doesn't believe Peggy's guilty—he'd chuck the case if it wasn't for Fyffe."

"Chuck the case!" Collingwood said eagerly.

"I honestly believe he would," Lord Ellerdine answered. "It's the letter which sticks with Fyffe, and I don't understand it—we come against the beastly thing all the time."

Collingwood nodded. "Yes," he said; "that letter's hell."

He suddenly raised his head. "Look here, Dicky," he said, "I think I hear Peggy coming; so off you go, please. Get your American expert to dine with us to-night at your place, at eight o'clock. Run along."

Ellerdine went to the door. "All right, old chap," he said; "that is what I'll do. Eight o'clock. I'm so glad it wasn't you, old chap—such a dirty business!"

He went out of the room, not noticing that he had left his hat and gloves upon the writing-table.

A moment afterwards Peggy entered, pulling aside the curtains of the terrace window. She started violently when she saw Collingwood. "You here!" she said, and there was an ugly note of apprehension and even of anger in her voice. "You——"

Collingwood went up to her. "Peggy!" he said.

"Wasn't that Dicky I heard?"

"Yes."

Collingwood had hardly said it, and the two were looking at each other strangely enough, when the door leading into the hall opened and Lord Ellerdine came back. "Forgot my hat, old chap," he said, going up to the table. Then he saw Peggy.

"Peggy!" he cried, going up to her and taking one of her hands in both of his. "Buck up, little woman! It'll be all right—we'll pull you through!"

Then he began to hesitate and stammer, while his cheeks flushed and he showed every possible sign of embarrassment.

"Yes," he continued, "we'll pull you through. Won't we, Colling?"

He hesitated, at a loss for words; and then his eye fell upon the table. "Ah!" he said. "My hat—yes—good-bye. Buck up, little woman! And, Colling, don't forget eight o'clock to-night."

Red and shy as a schoolgirl, Lord Ellerdine somehow got himself out of the room.

"Poor, dear old Dicky!" Peggy said with a sigh, more to herself than to her companion; and then, turning, "Colling, why have you come?"

Collingwood held out both his hands. "Peggy—dear little Peggy!" he said. "My heart bleeds for you!"

Peggy stepped back. "Don't let's talk about that," she said swiftly.

"But, Peggy——"

"It is rather late," the girl returned in the same cold voice; "the time for sympathy is long past. Why did you ask to see me?"

There was a deep note of passion in Collingwood's voice as he answered. "I could not let you think what I could see you were thinking," he said.

Peggy did not appear moved in any way. "You promised," she said, "neither to come nor to ask to see me."

"I could not stay away any longer," he answered; and if ever a man had tears in his voice, Collingwood had then.

"Have you come to tell me that the man Stevens is telling a lie, and that our trip to Paris was only accident?"

"No," the man replied. "Peggy dear, can you ever——"

"Colling! Colling! why did you do it?" she wailed.

His body went back suddenly as if he had received an actual blow in the chest.

"Oh, Peggy—for God's sake!..."

"You have thought neither of God nor me," she answered bitterly.

"Of you," he cried—"always of you, Peggy!"

She shook her head. "No," she said. "Thought of me would have made you think of all I have had to suffer. Did you think of me when you planned to go to Paris? When did you ever think of me—my being—my life—my soul? What excuse can you offer?"

His arms fell to his side, his face was pale and passionate. "Only my love," he answered—"my fierce, burning love. The mad desire to have you for my own. I have thought of nothing else since I met you."

She bent forward and threw out her arm. The little ivory-white hand was palm upwards, and it shook in dreadful accusation.

"Thought of me?" she cried. "Was it thought of me that drove me under the lash of that man's scourge to-day? Was it thought of me that placed me like a criminal in that court to-day? How could you have thought of me and not foreseen the shame, the misery, and the torture to which I have been subjected? Where was your love for me when you were conscious of the mass of evidence these creatures were piling up against me? Did your love of me foresee newsboys rushing about the streets with placards blazing out like letters of fire, 'Mrs. Admaston on the Rack'? Rack, Colling!"

He shook his head with a terrible gesture of sadness.

"No. I did not foresee it," he said, "because you made me believe that you were in earnest—that you loved me. If you had loved me you wouldn't have cared."

"I liked you, Colling, I liked you," she said; and now all the fire had gone from her voice.

"Liked me! Was it mere liking that made you take all those risks? You knew my intention. I told you again and again I wanted him to divorce you."

"I never realised——" the girl said hopelessly.

His voice as he answered her was very soft and tender.

"No, dear; you played with me. I am not blaming you, but don't be too harsh in judging me. I know the torture you are suffering now, Peggy, and I would give my right hand to save you from it. But don't you ever think of the torture you have given me? All the pain, the longing of months and months—is it all to be forgotten? Oh, I know it is no excuse to the others; but you, dear, will know in your heart that I did it because I loved you, thinking to make you happy."

"I think I understand, Colling," Peggy said; "but the letter——"

Collingwood appeared dazed. "The letter!" he murmured.

"Oh, Colling," she answered, "I'll forgive you anything you have done because you loved me; but the letter—you will own up, Colling?"

"Own up?"

"Yes, dear," Peggy said; "my life depends on it. You are a man. You can begin again. Don't see me go under. There is no hope for a woman. Don't stand there and watch me struggle while there is a chance to save me. I'll forgive everything—yes, everything—but the letter."

Collingwood seemed genuinely surprised. His face, which at first appeared perplexed, now showed nothing but astonishment as he realised what she meant. "Peggy—little Peggy," he said, "surely you don't judge me as harshly as that, do you? No, dear; I have done much that I am sorry for—that I shall never be able to forgive myself for as long as I live, but not that. The letter is the work of some one else. I never wrote it."

"Oh, Colling," she replied, "I am so glad—so very glad! But the letter—the letter is everything after all. It means everything to me. Then, if you didn't write it—there is only one other person who could possibly have done so."

"Exactly," Collingwood answered. "Lady Attwill and I were the only two people who knew anything about the Paris trip, who could know anything about it. But the question is, how on earth are we going to prove that she wrote that letter? I do not see any possible way in which it can be done, and I am sure you don't."

"If we prove it," Peggy answered, "do you think it will satisfy George, Colling?"

"Satisfy?" Collingwood replied, seating himself on the edge of the writing-table. "I should think so—he is satisfied already. But still, you know, Peggy, the letter sticks. Why, even Lady Attwill knew that there was nothing between us. It was only the appearance of guilt which she schemed for, and that letter gives it."

"And if we can't prove it, and the worst happens, she hopes to marry George," Peggy said despairingly.

The bitterness of the thought was terrible. It seemed as she sat there that such treachery and black-heartedness were almost incredible. Could the woman who had been her constant friend, who had stayed with her for months at a time, on whom she had lavished innumerable favours, be so base and despicable of soul as this?

Collingwood saw what was passing in her mind, and nodded.

"That is her game without a doubt, Peggy," he said earnestly.

"Then why has she stood by me all these months? Why? Why? That is what I want to know," Peggy said.

Collingwood smiled bitterly. "Why, don't you see?" he said. "Because her devotion to you will touch George, who still loves you."

Peggy's face changed in a moment. "Oh, Colling!" she said, and her voice was inexpressibly pathetic—"oh, Colling, do you think George does love me still?"

"I know he does, and that you love him. My dear, if I could have won you I should not have stayed away all these months; but I owed you that—and I tried to play the game."

"Colling," she answered, in a burst of warmth and kindliness, "I never liked you so much as I do now, Colling. I think it is because I feel I can lean upon you and trust you——"

"Poor little Butterfly!" he answered; and there were tears in the eyes of this hardened man of fashion, tears which sprang to his eyes in spite of himself and showed the deep tenderness beneath.

"But, Colling," Peggy went on anxiously, "have we any chance at all of proving it against her? She has been awfully clever about it all, hasn't she?"

Collingwood shook his head rather hopelessly. "I doubt if we have any chance at all," he said. "But there is just one thing—I have just remembered it. I have a sort of clue, and that is one which Dicky has just given me when he was here a few minutes ago."

"Oh! Dicky!" Peggy said, with a wan little smile.

"Well," Collingwood resumed, "of course no one would call Dicky intellectual and that, but I really think there is something in what he said this time. I'll tell you. He has consulted an American handwriting expert about the letters, and he says that they are the work of some one who can write with the left hand. I know that I can't write with my left hand. But what about Alice?"

"I don't know," Peggy answered slowly; "I have never heard of her doing so."

"Or using it more than the ordinary?" Collingwood continued.

"Yes—stay," Peggy replied eagerly. "She is ever so good with it at billiards."

Collingwood laughed.

"Oh, don't laugh, Colling!" she continued—"please don't laugh at me—but I remember she did tell me—yes—that she broke her right arm sleighing when she was a girl, and that she is almost ambidextrous. It has only just come back to me. She told me many years ago."

Collingwood jumped up from the table alert and excited.

"That is something—by Jove! it is," he cried. "Tell me, where is she?"

"She has only gone upstairs for a moment," Peggy said. "I am expecting her down every moment."

"By the way, Peggy," Collingwood asked, "where does she write her letters and things when she is here with you?"

"She always writes there," Peggy answered, pointing to the table, "where you have been sitting."

"Look here," Collingwood said decisively, "when she comes, leave her alone with me. I'll do what I can. I'll tackle her. You had better not be here at all."

"But, Colling, can't I help?" Peggy asked. "I think I might be of use, though of course it will be dreadfully unpleasant. But, for my own sake, I must stick at nothing now."

"No, Peggy," he replied firmly. "I feel I can manage this much better myself. Look here—you go out upon the terrace again. I will just come with you and settle you in your chair—how tired you look!—and then a mauvais quart d'heure for Alice, if she ever had one in her life."

"But it may not be true after all," Peggy said, as they walked together towards the long windows.

He shook his head at that. "It must be true," he said; "no one else could have done it; and what you have just told me, and what Dicky said, make it conclusive to my mind."

They passed behind the curtains together, and there was the sound of a chair being moved over the tessellated floor.

---

THE LAST CHAPTER

Lady Attwill was upstairs in her bedroom.

It was very large, and luxuriously furnished, with Chippendale chairs and Adams ceiling, while the walls were covered with a paper of white upon which, here and there, tiny apple blossoms of pink and grass-green were indicated.

Despite its size, the room felt close, and Alice Attwill had thrown open all the windows to the summer afternoon.

The cooler air, scented with flowers, poured into the place, but she seemed to notice nothing of it.

She walked up and down the room with her feline grace—for this was natural to her, and no careful pose or cultivated mannerism. Her lovely head was bent a little forward as she walked, and the hands which were clasped behind her slim waist folded and unfolded themselves nervously.

The face itself was very white, the eyes glistened, the lips twitched nervously, and there was about her an atmosphere of terror.

She made it herself, this beautiful woman walking up and down a beautiful room; but fear there was in that quiet place, and it did not come in there from the open windows, but radiated out from a guilty mind and a wildly pulsating heart. Every now and again, as she walked up and down, Alice Attwill moistened her lips with her tongue and glanced at the travelling-clock covered with red leather which stood upon the mantlepiece.

At last she stopped with one thoughtful glance at the clock.

"It'll be all right now," she said to herself. "I am sure they must be beginning to suspect me. Fool that I was! Why, every novel and almost every play has this question of the blotting-book in it. It is such a simple device, and yet in real life how often it does happen! Here am I confronted with the worst crisis in my whole life, simply because I forgot the blotting-book."

Clenching her teeth she quietly left the room, descended the wide Georgian stairs into the hall, and opened the door of the drawing-room.

She peered cautiously into the room, now lit up by clusters of electric lights.

Satisfied that no one was there, she closed the door very quietly, and with silent, cat-like steps walked up to the writing-table.

Again, as her hand fell upon the blotting-book, she looked round in an agony of apprehension. Then, opening it hurriedly, she searched among the leaves with a puzzled brow.

Some of the leaves were heavily blotted and no writing upon them was wholly distinguishable, while others only bore a few well-defined imprints.

Her slender, trembling fingers turned over the leaves in an agony of anxiety, but—either she was too agitated or too inexperienced—she was unable to find what she sought.

Suddenly a thought came to her.

The mirror!—yes, that was the thing. By the aid of the mirror she would be able to identify the sheet she wanted at once. She hurried up to the fireplace.

Above it was an oval mirror framed in wood which had been painted white, and, shaking exceedingly, hardly knowing what she did, she held up the heavy blotter with the paper facing the mirror, and slowly turned over the thick white sheets.

While she was doing this, with a perfectly livid face, she heard the faint sound of an advancing footstep.

It was at the very moment when she thought she had discovered what she wanted, and with twitching fingers was about to tear it out from the book.

The sound of the step came from behind the curtains which hung over the windows leading to the terrace.

Lady Attwill almost bounded back to the writing-table and put down the blotter upon it.

She had hardly done so, and was actually closing the book, when the curtains parted with a soft swish and Collingwood came into the room.

He came in jauntily and easily enough, but there was something in his face which made Alice Attwill give a little startled gasp of alarm and despair.

"Writing letters, Alice?" Collingwood said easily, though there was a chill in his voice which sounded like the note of doom in the miserable woman's ears.

"I have finished writing," she said, stammering—"just finished."

Collingwood came up to her without removing his eyes from hers. He came slowly up, with a steady, persistent stare, magnetic, horrible.

"Just got up from writing, eh? That's lucky!" he said. "I want to have a talk with you, Alice—by the way, let me post your letters."

"Please don't trouble," she faltered.

"No trouble, I assure you," he answered, his voice becoming more cold, dangerous, and menacing than ever. "I assure you it is no trouble, Alice. There can't even be a great weight of letters for me to take to the post—because, you see, Peggy and I were here until about two minutes ago."

There was a revolving chair of green leather in front of the writing-table. Lady Attwill sank into it. She felt as if the whole room, with all its contents, was spinning round her with horrible rapidity. She sank into the chair, unable to stand longer; but, even as she did so, one last despairing gleam of hope prompted her to make an effort to show that she was still unconcerned and sitting down in a natural way.

"I hardly expected to see you here," she said in a rather high, staccato voice, the words coming from her one by one as if each separate word was produced with great difficulty.

"Indeed?" Collingwood asked. "And why not?"

The fact that she was sitting down, that she had the arms of the chair to hold, that she was somewhere, seemed to give Alice Attwill more courage.

In a voice which was still tremulous, but in which an ugly note of temper was beginning to displace the abject indications of fear, she answered him.

She pushed her head a little forward, and her eyes shone with malice.

"I should have thought that the revelations of this afternoon would have——"

Collingwood recognised the change of attitude in a moment.

"Closed these doors to those who planned the trip to Paris—yes?"

"I was not thinking of the trip to Paris," she said.

Collingwood shrugged his shoulders. "Because we were partners in that, of course," he replied.

"Partners!" she cried shrilly. "I knew nothing about it. It was you who gave the orders to the porter and booked the rooms—I don't come in anywhere!"

Collingwood folded his arms and stood with his feet somewhat apart, looking down upon her with a face which, in its contempt and strength, once more drove her into an extremity of fear.

When he spoke again his voice had lost its bitterness and contempt, but it had become harsh and imperative. It was the voice of a bullying counsel in the courts—the voice in which a low man speaks to a servant.

"That is your game, is it?" he said. "You never knew of the trip to Paris?"

The woman was spurred up to answer. She met his voice with one precisely in the same key; it was a voice a succession of unfortunate lady's-maids knew very well.

"Absolutely nothing," she said; "where as you—your guilt, my friend, is clear, transparently clear."

She nodded two or three times to emphasise her assertion, and by this time her composure had returned to her and she was ready for anything.

Collingwood, who had been watching her with the most intense scrutiny, had followed with perfect clearness the changes in her voice and attitude. He now knew where he was. The bluff was over, he was about to play his hand.

More particularly than anything else his mind, intensely alert and active at this supreme moment, noticed that Alice Attwill had wheeled round upon her chair and seemed in a most marked way to be interposing herself between him and the writing-table.

It was as though some precious possession lay there of which she feared she would be robbed.

Feeling certain now of the woman's guilt, he said: "Perhaps you are also going to suggest that I wrote that dastardly letter?"

Lady Attwill sneered. "One of us obviously must have written it," she said, "and your motive—well, it is pretty clear, isn't it?"

"And yours," he said—"and isn't yours clear also?"

"Do you think so?" she asked, with a toss of her head.

He bent forward, gazing at her with an almost deadly look of hate.

"Look here," he said: "don't you hope to marry Admaston if Peggy loses this case?"

She was frightened—obviously very frightened; but she did her best to throw it off.

"My dear Colling," she said in a light and airy manner, "you are so imbued with the remarkable excellence of Sir Robert Fyffe's methods that you are imitating him. But you are doing it so badly, Colling—so extremely badly!"

His face did not change in the slightest. It remained as set and firm as before, absolutely uninfluenced by what she was saying.

"Isn't it true that you hope to marry George Admaston?" he repeated in exactly the same tone.

She lifted her pretty left hand in the air and snapped her fingers in a gesture full of mingled insolence and provocation.

"Why should I satisfy your curiosity?" she said.

Again the man, intent upon one great purpose, absolutely not to be deterred from it or to be influenced in any way by what she was saying, repeated his query.

"How can you explain that letter?" he said, in the insistent tone of a judge. "Who else could have written it except you or me?"

Her eyelids fluttered. She looked up at him quickly. "I don't attempt to explain it," she said; "but I certainly agree with you that one of us must have written it—any fool can see that; but which of us?"

She paused for a moment, and then looked him straightly in the face, defiant and at bay at last.

"But which of us?" she repeated. "That's the point upon which we shall differ, Colling."

"I see," he said. "You mean that you will endeavour to father this cowardly trick upon me?"

Alice Attwill smiled bitterly. "The public will judge," she said. "Ever since that night have I not been in constant attendance here, her devoted and trusted friend?—while you—I thought you had been forbidden the house."

"That's a lie," Collingwood said sharply.

"It is quite unnecessary to become abusive," she went on, her voice gaining confidence for a moment and her manner becoming infinitely more assured. "You are in a very tight corner, and the sooner you recognise the fact the better it will be for you."

"You think you can threaten me?" Collingwood asked quietly.

"I know my cards," she replied, "and what I can do with them. You needn't try to bluff me, Colling, for I know your cards too. Even if I did write that letter—how can you ever prove it? You can assert it, but who will believe you—you who stand convicted of decoying your friend's wife to Paris to attempt her seduction?..."

He winced at that. Even in his present mood of penitence and help, it was a palpable hit.

"With your assistance," he said, and that was all.

She pressed her momentary triumph. "So you will assert," she said.... "But I shall deny it—and there is nothing but your word. It will be suggested to you—by Peggy's counsel, if not by Admaston's—that you wrote the letter which has caused all the bother. You will try to put it on to me——"

He interrupted her quickly. "You will never dare to deny it," he said in a voice of conviction.

"My dear, simple friend," she answered, "why not? I loved George Admaston, as you have said. Do you think I shall sacrifice myself and save you? You can make your mind easy on that score. No, my dear Colling, there is only one way out. To-morrow your counsel will have to say that in the face of the evidence to-day he can contest the case no further. Then you will not go into the witness-box."

"Not go into the witness-box?" he asked.

"Admaston will get his divorce," she went on in a final voice, but one in which a note of conciliation had crept. "You will marry Peggy—I shall marry Admaston—and no one will know about the letters. But if you dare to fight, you will leave the court dishonoured. Peggy will never look at you. You take my advice, Colling, and marry the girl you love, and don't try to interfere with my plans, just when victory is assured."

The note of conciliation in her voice stung every fibre of decency, every sense of honour in him. He raised his eyebrows in extreme contempt and surprise. "You must have a pretty poor opinion of me," he said.

"The highest, my dear Colling," she replied; "but the situation is just a little too big for you."

"We shall see," he answered. "You have been very frank with me. I gather that you don't deny your authorship of that infamous letter."

Her face, and indeed her whole manner, had by now become almost indifferent. "I am not called upon to deny anything that cannot be proved," she said. "You have heard this afternoon that the experts have entirely failed to identify the writing. How did you manage to deceive them, Colling? Still, I suppose it is not very difficult to trick a handwriting expert."

"Don't be too disrespectful to experts yet, my lady. I have a notion that a report I have just received from an American expert may give you food for thought. After all, if you hadn't been afraid of these experts you wouldn't have written that second letter three days ago."

She glared at him. "Well, what does your Yankee say?" she asked.

"He has proved conclusively that I could not have written the letter."

At that she jumped up from her seat, still keeping herself between the writing-table and him. "What do you mean?" she said.

Collingwood dealt his trump card. "I mean," he said, "that since you have finished writing your own letters, you will have no objection to my writing there for a moment."

His voice was so pregnant with meaning, so fraught with decision, that Alice Attwill slunk away from the table, trembling, as Collingwood seated himself in the writing-chair.

"Writing what?" she asked almost in a whisper.

"A confession——" he said.

"A confession?"

"—Which you will sign. I intend before I leave this room to have from you a signed confession that you wrote that letter."

"You are proposing to make a long stay," she said, slowly and venomously.

Collingwood did not answer her at all. He took a sheet of paper and wrote a few sentences upon it in a firm, bold handwriting.

When he had finished he held it up to her. "Will you read it through?" he said.

With the utmost carelessness she bent forward over the writing-table. Her manner was that of one who was reading some casual note.

"I have done so," she said at length.

Collingwood fell into her mood. "Now," he said, "if I had your signature to that, par exemple, there would be an end of Admaston versus Admaston and Collingwood, wouldn't there?"

Alice Attwill smiled. "That is obvious enough," she said.

Collingwood took the paper and opened the blotting-book, while Lady Attwill walked towards the fireplace.

She walked away with the same assumed air of indifference, but, when she heard the heavy leather-and-silver cover fall upon the table, she looked round and watched the man intently.

She saw him blot the confession upon a blank sheet at the beginning of the book, and then with the utmost care and deliberation turn over each separate leaf, scrutinising it like a man who looks at something through a microscope.

Suddenly one page seemed to strike his attention. He smoothed it out, pulled the blotter closer towards him, and took from his pocket photographs of the famous letters in the case.

He put one of the photographs upon a leaf of the blotter and compared them carefully. Then he took a small glass from his pocket and examined the photograph and the page of the blotter with that.

When he had, apparently, satisfied himself, he looked round with a white, stern face to where the defiant but trembling woman was standing by the fireplace.

There was a silence for a moment. It was broken by Lady Attwill saying, "Can I do anything for you?"

"Yes," Collingwood replied; "you can bring me that looking-glass from that small table there."

She looked at him without saying a word.

"You don't seem very eager," he said. "But there is an excellent mirror over the fireplace."

At that, as if hypnotised, she went up to the little table by the piano and took up a small Italian mirror framed in ivory and silver.

She gave it to him. "Well," she asked, "have you solved the mystery?"

"Wait!" he replied. He took the mirror in one hand, propping up the blotter with its back towards him, and looking intently into the glass.

After a moment or two he looked up. "You should be more careful where you blot your letters," he said simply. "You will notice that the impression upon the blotting-paper is not complete—though they obviously tally."

Speechless with terror, she made a sudden snatch at the sheet in the blotter which she had already begun to tear out when his entrance disturbed her.

He caught her by the wrist. "No," he said, very quietly and sternly. "I thought you would do that. I saw you trying to do it when I came in just now. Now, look here—look at the photograph and at the representation of your writing in the mirror. Have you any doubt that the impression upon the blotting-paper is the impression made by the blotting of that letter?"

"And if it is," she said, in one last faint effort, "what does that prove? Why should not you have written it and blotted it?"

"Because, my dear Alice," he replied, "I have not been in this house until this afternoon for six months. Listen! To-day the judge dropped a remark about the importance of finding the paper on which this letter was blotted. You alone knew where it was. Very well, in the sequence of events, Pauline found you here—the first moment the room was empty—with a cock-and-bull story about your bag. A few minutes later I, having heard this from Pauline, find you in the act of destroying this damning evidence—see, it's half torn out already. Come, the game's up."

Aristocrat as she was, something low, vulgar, and malignantly mocking came out upon Lady Attwill's face as Collingwood said this.

"Is it?" she said. "Do you think I am afraid of you and your game of bluff? You have forgotten the important link in your chain. How do you explain the discrepancy in the writing? That writing is not mine."

"Isn't it?" he asked quietly.

"No!" she almost shouted. "A pretty conspiracy!—to damn me and save Peggy Admaston. Why shouldn't Pauline have written it?"

Up to this he had listened to her with some patience. Now his face blazed at her for a moment. He sat down in the writing-chair, pulling it up to the table as he did so. "I'll show you," he said. "Sit down there."

She looked at him defiantly.

"Sit down there," he said again, and she did so. "Now take the pen and write what I dictate," he went on.

He began to dictate, "'Please destroy the other letter....'"

He leant over the table, tapping gently upon it with his knuckles.

"No! the other hand, please," he said.

The woman almost fell over the table.

"With my left hand?" she gasped. "What on earth do you mean? I can't write with my left hand."

"My expert thinks you can," he said sternly. "Come—write; or would you prefer to write to-morrow in court?"

She jumped up, and hysteria mastered her.

"I won't write!" she cried, in a voice which was hardly human. "Neither here nor in court! You can't make me ... the judge can't make me!"

Collingwood punctuated her shrill remarks with gentle taps of his firm hand upon the table. "You shall write to-morrow with all London looking on; they'll know I could not have done it—this book shows that. They'll hear how you tried to tear out the page."

"They won't believe you!" she gasped.

"They'll believe the evidence of Pauline," he went on calmly. "They'll hear from Peggy how you broke your arm and learnt to use your left hand. Every newspaper in England will be full of it. This is not the first time you've written with your left hand; there'll be other specimens somewhere—some other witness will be forthcoming. You have been very clever, but the cleverest of people like you bungle in the end. You've got to do it, Alice!"

Once more she sank down in the chair.

Her face was ghastly. "No!" was all that she could say.

"Believe me," he went on more calmly and more kindly—"believe me, you had better write now! Society may never know—Admaston may be generous. Come! Write! And do it quickly."

Absolutely broken and submissive, Lady Attwill took up the pen in her left hand and began to write to Collingwood's dictation.

"'Please destroy the other letter....'" he began.

She wrote the first word, and then looked up at him with a face which was a white wedge of hate.

"Quickly, please," he said, tapping his foot upon the carpet. "Now, or to-morrow with all London."

The wretched woman bent down once more to her shameful task.

"'... and this,'" he went on, "'and save an old servant who honours the family....'"

Again she looked up at him.

"Quickly!" he said imperatively, rapping his knuckles upon the table. "Quickly!—or——"

Cowed and subdued, she wrote again. "'... from the anger of Mrs. Admaston,'" came the cool, dictating voice.

She finished, and as she did so her head fell upon her arms and she burst into a fit of hysterical sobs—shaking, convulsed, in a terrible downfall of remorse and shame.

Suddenly—as Collingwood held the precious paper in his hand and looked with a certain compassion at his old friend and companion of so many years, whom he had tortured so dreadfully—a high, joyous voice burst into the room.

It was Peggy calling.

The curtains which led to the terrace were pulled aside and she ran into the drawing-room.

Her face was radiant.

"Colling! Colling!" she cried. "George is here!" She hurried up to Collingwood, looking for a moment rather strangely at Alice Attwill.

George Admaston, big, burly, and with all the weariness of the past weeks sponged and smoothed from his face, followed her into the drawing-room.

"Hullo, Colling," he said rather shyly, but with real geniality in his voice.

Collingwood ignored the outstretched hand. "Wait first, please," he said. "Lady Attwill has written you another copy of the letter she wrote three days ago." He handed the confession to Admaston.

There was a dead silence in the room as Admaston scrutinised the confession.

Then he went up to Lady Attwill, crouching over the table as she was, and put his hand not unkindly on her shoulder. "Good God!" he said. "Alice—why did you?"

A lovely tear-stained face looked up into the room.

A broken and unhappy voice sobbed out into the silence, "Let me go; let me go, I say!"

Admaston gently removed his hand. There was a swish of skirts, one deep sob, and then the door closed behind Alice Attwill.

Peggy went up to her husband and clung lovingly to his arm.

She looked at Collingwood. "Colling," she said, "how on earth did you find out?"

Collingwood pointed to the blotter. "Look there," he said.

Peggy and Admaston, still clinging together, went up to the writing-table and stared as if fascinated at the fatal and decisive page.

"Poor Alice!" Collingwood said. "I suppose it is because I have been a bit of a blackguard myself that I can't help feeling sorry for her. Perhaps, Admaston, you will find it in your heart, when the great case is withdrawn to-morrow, to let her down as lightly as possible."

He hesitated for a moment, and then he said in a quiet voice, "I think in her heart she really loved you, don't you know."

Admaston nodded.

"Yes, yes; I see," he said. "I will do what I can."

Collingwood, realising that he had been emotional, pulled himself together with immense aplomb. "It must be a comforting and flattering reflection that, but for the fit of nerves which caused Alice to write that second letter three days ago, there is probably not a judge nor jury in the world which would have refused to make you miserable for life, Admaston."

"You are right, Colling," he said; "but at the moment when no judge nor jury would have doubted her guilt—then, for the first time, I knew in my heart she was innocent."

Collingwood had listened to this, but had also been moving slowly towards the door of the drawing-room.

"But you, Colling——" Peggy said.

Collingwood's hand was upon the door. "Never mind about me," he said. "Peggy, I did a rotten thing because I cared for you, but I've tried to play the game since for the same reason; and if George can really forgive me for just the same reason——"

He stopped, looking with a wan, pathetic, but very tender face at the two who stood there clinging to each other.

Peggy looked up into her husband's face. "George!" she said quietly.

"—I think I'll go on playing it," Collingwood ended.

Admaston did not look at Collingwood, but he looked down at his wife. Then he lifted his head and smiled with a sort of grave kindness at the man by the door.

"I think I can forgive you anything to-day, Colling," he said.

Collingwood half turned the handle. "Good-bye, then, little Butterfly," he said, and there was a dreadful pain in his voice.

Peggy looked up into her husband's face.

What she saw there satisfied her.

She left him and walked shyly towards Collingwood and held out her hand.

He took it, bowed over it as if to kiss it, refrained, and then opened the door.

"Your wings are not really broken—not really," he said in a voice which was absolutely broken.

There was a sound of the soft closing of a door—a little click as it fell into place.

Peggy ran back to her husband and put her hands upon his shoulders.

"My husband!" she said.

He caught her in his arms—in his strong arms.

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