“Are you acquainted with the popular saying: 'None are so blind as those who will not see?'”
The tone was so insulting that indignation restored Erica to her full strength; she was stung into giving a sharp retort.
“Yes,” she said very quietly. “It has often occurred to me during this action as strangely applicable to the defendant.”
Mr. Cringer looked as if he could have eaten her. There was a burst of applause which was speedily suppressed.
“Yet you do not, of course, mean to deny the whole allegation?”
“Emphatically!”
“Are you aware that people will think you either a deluded innocent or an infamous deceiver?”
“I am not here to consider what people may think of me, but to speak the truth.”
And as she spoke she involuntarily glanced toward those twelve fellow-countrymen of hers upon whose verdict so much depended. Probably even the oldest, even the coldest of the jurymen felt his heart beat a little faster as those beautiful, sad honest eyes scanned the jury box. As for the counsel for the defense, he prudently accepted his defeat and, as Raeburn would not ask a single question of his daughter in cross-examination, another witness was called.
Long after, it was a favorite story among the young barristers of how Mr. Cringer was checkmated by Raeburn's daughter.