A quite small room, panelled, badly lighted, thronged with people—this is the real theatre where the dramas of society are played in London town....
"It is alleged," Mr. M'Arthur, Peggy's own counsel, continued, "that, having reached Paris, you permitted Mr. Collingwood to engage rooms—connected the one with the other."
"I did not know that Mr. Collingwood's room opened out of mine," Mrs. Admaston said. "It seems the hotel was full."
Everyone in the court—one person only excepted—was looking at the slim young woman in the witness-box. She was very simply dressed. Her face was perfectly pale, but her self-possession was marvellous.
From their seats behind the junior counsel, Colonel Adams and Henry Passhe looked on with sympathetic interest.
Passhe—who was somewhat of a psychologist—remarked upon the extreme simplicity of Mrs. Admaston's dress to his friend. "I call it ostentatious," he said, "or something of a trick. When a woman has an income of eighty thousand pounds a year quite apart from her husband, it seems to me exaggerated humility to appear in the clothes that any little milliner might wear."
Colonel Adams shrugged his shoulders. He didn't in the least understand his friend's point of view....
"After you went to bed"—the handsome young-elderly Mr. M'Arthur continued,—"it is said that you permitted Mr. Collingwood to enter your room—you being at the time undressed—and to stay there a considerable time."
Peggy's little white-gloved hands rested upon the rail of the witness-box.
"I don't know about permitting," she said in a clear voice. "He came in because he heard the telephone. I think he thought that I had gone to bed, and that the call might be from our friends."