Her voice rang out into the court shrill with the long torture of her examination, but passionate with her own certainty of her innocence. "There's not a rag of truth in any of them. You may think you can make black white, and white black, you may hire spies, tamper with railway servants and waiters...."
An instant reproof came from the judge—two words: "Mrs. Admaston!" he said.
She looked up, but hardly heard him.
"... And do all the rest of the degrading work which seems inseparable from this court."
"Mrs. Admaston," the President said again, "you must not speak like that."
All men, even judges, are influenced by circumstance. It is probable that the President would have been far more severe at such an outburst as this, if Mrs. Admaston had not been a millionairess in her own right and the wife of a prominent Cabinet Minister. And it is sure also that, under such circumstances as these, an ordinary woman, without the unconscious consciousness of her financial and social position, would not have dared to do as Peggy did.
Despite the President's admonition, a torrent of half hysterical, wholly indignant words poured from the witness-box.
"And what right have they to treat me like this?" Peggy cried. "Am I to be treated as guilty, merely because I have foolishly courted temptation? I don't know what I have said, I don't know what I shall say before this torture is completed; but I am sensible enough to know that I have no chance in all this farrago of horrible insinuation which twists every little piece of harmless and girlish folly into some vicious and debasing form. I cannot keep quiet under it. I tell you it is all—all—lies—nothing but lies!"
"Now, Mrs. Admaston," Sir Robert said, apparently unmoved by this tirade, "I must ask you to give me your very close attention."
"You must try to be more composed," the President said kindly to Peggy, "if you wish to do yourself justice."