"I knew for some months that he was very fond of me."
"And did your husband know?" echoed out into the court.
"I suppose so," was the faint answer.
"Do you suggest that your husband would ever have permitted you to go away, even in the company of friends, with a man who had been abusing his friendship by making passionate love to his wife?"
There was no answer to that. No sound came from the witness-box—the whole court waited for the response.
Sir Robert was leaning forward now, his head shaking from side to side, his blood-hound face, his extremely vivid eyes, fixed upon Peggy's face. "Do you really ask the jury to believe that?" he said.
Still Peggy was silent. She seemed to have drooped into something like a faded flower. She said nothing. There was nothing for her to say.
And in the silence the calm, judicial voice of the President, full of commiseration—without prejudice one way or the other, nevertheless,—made its demand. "You must answer, Mrs. Admaston," said the judge.
"I don't think my husband knew how fond of me he was," Peggy said.
"If he had known," Sir Robert said, very gently now, and with a little quiver in his voice—"if he had known, don't you think, Mrs. Admaston, he would have been very angry to know how you were situated in Paris?"