"Colonel Lefroy has been with you, I take it."
"A man calling himself by that name has been here. Will you not take a chair?"
"I do not know that it will be necessary. What he has told you,—what I suppose he has told you,—is true."
"You had better at any rate take a chair. I do not believe that what he has told me is true."
"But it is."
"I do not believe that what he has told me is true. Some of it cannot, I think, be true. Much of it is not so,—unless I am more deceived in you than I ever was in any man. At any rate sit down." Then the schoolmaster did sit down. "He has made you out to be a perjured, wilful, cruel bigamist."
"I have not been such," said Peacocke, rising from his chair.
"One who has been willing to sacrifice a woman to his passion."
"No; no."
"Who deceived her by false witnesses."