Her affectation of lightness went very ill with the weighty, measured accusations of Sir Robert Fyffe.
It struck a jarring note in the court. It did her harm.
"You do not deny that you flirted," Sir Robert said, with a little nod of his head—"and encouraged this man, this very charming companion, to flirt with you?"
"And if I did," she replied, still defiant, "my husband trusted me, and knew that there was nothing in it."
"Mrs. Admaston, if that is true, why were you afraid to talk to him upon the night of the 23rd March, and why did you connive at a deliberate lie on the following day?"
There was a cold and deliberate disgust in Sir Robert's voice, and almost every person there gave a little sympathetic shudder.
But Peggy, brave to the last, still fought on. "I was a fool," she said, with a little shrug of the shoulders, as if the question was of no great moment. "I was a fool. The others thought the thing much worse than it was, and that frightened me. I have told you already that I loathed myself for lying as I did."
Sir Robert knitted his brows for a moment, and then decided on his course of action.
That brilliant brain was never at a loss. Again, after a second's hesitation, the deadly thrust was delivered. It was delivered with such apparent suavity and innocence, with such a relaxation of the hard, accusing note, that the girl in the witness-box was utterly deceived.
"You mean," said Sir Robert, "that though you did not tell your husband everything about your harmless flirtations—your peccadilloes—you never before deliberately lied to shield yourself?"