“Your Honour,” said the flagging voice— “Your Honour, I ask that that reply be stricken from the record as unresponsive.”
“The Court does not regard it as unresponsive. You requested Miss Page to give her final interpretation of the telephone conversation and she has given it.”
“May I have an exception, Your Honour?”
“Certainly.”
“Then the story that you expect this jury to believe, Miss Page, is that nothing but affectionate zeal prompted you to spy on this benefactress of yours and to bear the glad tidings of her infidelity to her unsuspecting husband—tidings acquired through a reputed conversation of which you were the sole witness and the self-constituted recorder?”
“I hope that they will believe me,” said Miss Page meekly. For one brief moment her ingenuous eyes rested appealingly on the twelve stolid and inscrutable countenances.
“And I hope that you are unduly optimistic,” said Mr. Lambert heavily. “That is all, Miss Page.”
“Just one moment,” said the prosecutor easily. “Miss Page, when Mr. Lambert asked you whether anyone couldn’t have overheard that conversation, he prevented you from explaining why no one was likely to. Let’s first get that straight. Where was Mrs. Daniel Ives?”
“In the rose garden.”
“That was where she usually went after dinner, wasn’t it?”