"No harm! Did Lord Ellerdine know?"
"No."
"Did your husband know?"
"No."
And now into the voice of the great counsel began to creep a note of contempt, which was doubtless perfectly genuine. He had met the woman he was cross-examining in society. He had liked her. But, as every one knew, Sir Robert's own domestic life was one of singular happiness and accord.
It is pretty certain that—having known Admaston and his wife—he was becoming genuinely indignant at what he thought the treachery of the girl.
"Was this another of those perfectly harmless things which you didn't care to tell your husband about?" he said.
"I saw no harm in it," Peggy replied, and in answer to the colder note in Sir Robert's voice her own became stubborn.
"But you would not have liked him to know? Well! You have now admitted that Mr. Collingwood had been making passionate love to you for months before the trip to Paris. We are getting at the truth gradually. I suppose that he made these declarations of love several times at Lord Ellerdine's?"
"I think he spoke to me on two or three occasions," Peggy almost murmured.