"That's not quite settled on. She threatened to bring an action against us if we talked about it. And, of course, we have talked. We are quite ready to meet her action, and would rather it came on in that way. But if she doesn't make a move soon, we shall be obliged to. It will be the only chance of getting anything back. We have had detectives working, and it is quite certain that she has sold pearls in Paris within the last month. They are ready to swear to her. She has pawned one in London, too—in the city. So you see we're quite certain about her. Yet it would only be circumstantial evidence, for, of course, nobody could swear to separate pearls; and she might get off. What Miss Joan saw would clinch it. I'm awfully sorry about it, since Mr. Clinton feels as he does, but I'm bound to say that I think she ought to be prepared to give her evidence. It wouldn't be fair on us to hold it back, even if it was possible—now would it?"
Mrs. Clinton seemed unwilling to express an opinion, but she told her husband later on, when Bobby Trench had taken himself off, that she feared there would be no help for it, Joan would have to give her evidence, whether they liked it or no.
And so it proved. In answer to his letter to Lord Sedbergh, the Squire received an intimation from his old friend that they had decided to prosecute at once. They had learnt that Mrs. Amberley, who was getting cold-shouldered everywhere, was making arrangements to leave England altogether. They were on the point of having her arrested. He was very sorry that a girl of Joan's age should be mixed up in such an unpleasant affair, but it must be plain that her evidence could not be dispensed with, and he hoped that, after all, the ordeal might not be such a very trying one for her. She would only have to tell her story and stick to it. Everything should be done on their side that was possible to make things easy for her, and the affair would soon blow over.
The Squire, raging inwardly and outwardly, had to bow to circumstances. The day after he had received Lord Sedbergh's letter a summons came for Joan to present herself at a certain police court, and he and Mrs. Clinton took her up to London the same afternoon.
CHAPTER IV
JOAN GIVES HER EVIDENCE
The June sunshine, beating through the dusty windows of the Police Court, fell upon a very different assembly from that which was usually to be found in that place of mean omen.
The gay London crowd that was accustomed to pass continuously within a stone's throw of its walls, without giving a thought to those dubious stories of the underworld which were daily elucidated there, had made of it the centre of their interest this morning. Many more than could be accommodated had sought for admission, in order to witness a scene in which the parts would be taken, not by the squalid professionals of crime, but by amateurs of their own high standing. The seedy loafers who were accustomed to congregate there had been shouldered out by a fashionable crowd, amongst which the actors who were to take part in the play found themselves the objects of attentions which some of them could well have dispensed with.
Joan sat between her father and mother, outwardly subdued, inwardly deeply interested. Behind the natural shrinking of a young girl, compelled to stand up and be questioned in public, there was the pluck of her race to support her. It would not be worse than having a tooth stopped, and that prospect had never deterred her from appreciation of the illustrated papers in the dentist's waiting-room. So now she sat absorbed by the expectation of what was about to happen, and felt exactly as if she were waiting for the curtain to go up on the first scene of a play she eagerly wanted to see.