“Do you mean to say that you had no interview with Major Stapylton, Peter?”
“Or that you have forgotten all about it?” said Withering.
“Or is it that you have taken a pledge of secrecy, brother Peter?”
“No, no, no! It is simply this, that though I retain a pretty fair general impression of what I said myself, and what he said afterwards, I could no more pretend to recount it accurately than I could say off by heart a scene in 'Romeo and Juliet.'”
“Why don't you take the 'Comedy of Errors' for your illustration, Peter Barrington? I ask you, Mr. Withering, have you in all your experience met anything like this?”
“It would go hard with a man in the witness-box to make such a declaration, I must say.”
“What would a jury think of, what would a judge say to him?” said she, using the most formidable of all penalties to her brother's imagination. “Wouldn't the court tell him that he would be compelled to speak out?”
“They'd have it out on the cross-examination, at all events, if not on the direct.”
“In the name of confusion, what do you want with me?” exclaimed Peter, in despair.
“We want everything,—everything that you heard about this man. Who he is, what he is; what by the father's side, what by the mother's; what are his means, and where; who knows him, who are his associates. Bear in mind that to us, here, he has dropped out of the clouds.”