He bent forward, gazing at her with an almost deadly look of hate.
"Look here," he said: "don't you hope to marry Admaston if Peggy loses this case?"
She was frightened—obviously very frightened; but she did her best to throw it off.
"My dear Colling," she said in a light and airy manner, "you are so imbued with the remarkable excellence of Sir Robert Fyffe's methods that you are imitating him. But you are doing it so badly, Colling—so extremely badly!"
His face did not change in the slightest. It remained as set and firm as before, absolutely uninfluenced by what she was saying.
"Isn't it true that you hope to marry George Admaston?" he repeated in exactly the same tone.
She lifted her pretty left hand in the air and snapped her fingers in a gesture full of mingled insolence and provocation.
"Why should I satisfy your curiosity?" she said.
Again the man, intent upon one great purpose, absolutely not to be deterred from it or to be influenced in any way by what she was saying, repeated his query.
"How can you explain that letter?" he said, in the insistent tone of a judge. "Who else could have written it except you or me?"