"But you were angry?"
"I wanted him to go," Peggy replied impatiently.
"Quite so," said Sir Robert. "But you allowed him to stay?"
She heard once more that inexorable persistence, that bland, passionless, but remorseless voice.
The little flicker of gaiety and of respite was over. She braced herself once more to stand up against this relentless onslaught, and clutched the rail of the witness-box before her.
"We are very old friends, Sir Robert," she answered. "I saw no particular harm in it."
"If you saw no particular harm in it, why did you not care to speak to your husband when he rang up?"
"One may do perfectly harmless things," she replied, "and yet not care to tell every one about them."
"And this was one of those perfectly harmless things which you didn't care to tell every one, or even your husband, about?"
"There was no harm in it," Peggy replied, and her voice rang out with a dreadful sense of suppressed irritation and pain.