“He said something in a rather low voice,” Palliser took it up. “I could not quite catch it all. It was something about `knowing the face again.' I can see you remember, Lady Joan. Can you repeat the exact words?”
He did not understand the struggle he saw in her face. It would have been impossible for him to understand it. What she felt was that if she lost hold on her strange belief in the honesty of this one decent thing she had seen and felt so close to her that it cleared the air she breathed, it would be as if she had fallen into a bottomless abyss. Without knowing why she did it, she got up from her chair as if she were a witness in a court.
“Yes, I can,” she said. “Yes, I can; but I wish to make a statement for myself. Whether Jem Temple Barholm is alive or dead, Captain Palliser, T. Tembarom has done him no harm.”
The duke sat up delicately alert. He had evidently found her worth looking at and listening to from the outset.
“Hear! Hear!” he said pleasantly.
“What were the exact words?” suggested Palliser.
Miss Alicia who had been weeping on Little Ann's shoulder—almost on her lap—lifted her head to listen. Hutchinson set his jaw and grunted, and Mr. Palford cleared his throat mechanically.
“He said,” and no one better than herself realized how ominously “cumulative” the words sounded, “that a man would know a face like that again—wherever he saw it.”
“Wherever he saw it!” ejaculated Mr. Grimby.
There ensued a moment of entire pause. It was inevitable. Having reached this point a taking of breath was necessary. Even the duke ceased to appear entirely detached. As Mr. Palford turned to his papers again there was perhaps a slight feeling of awkwardness in the air. Miss Alicia had dropped, terror smitten, into new tears.