The defendant's counsel cross-examined both witnesses, and made a praiseworthy—but unsuccessful—attempt to cast ridicule and doubt upon the two old servants, whom he tried hard to place before the jury as overpaid and venal hirelings, willing to perjure themselves to any extent for their employer. He gratified his professional vanity by letting off two or three forensic bon-mots, and succeeded in raising a laugh or two at the expense of the country-bred Abigail and the dignified London butler; but the endeavour to weaken their testimony was an ignominious failure.
"That, my lord, would complete my case," said Sir Joseph Jalland, "were it not essential that the falsehood and the folly of the slander in this scurrilous rag," striking the Bon Ton with his open hand, "should be stamped out at once and for ever; and in order that this may be effectually done—to prove indubitably that Lady Perivale was not with Colonel Rannock during his Continental wanderings last winter, I shall produce the person who was with him."
Miss Kate Delmaine stepped into the box, admirably dressed, like Lady Perivale, in a black cloth gown, and wearing a sable toque almost of the same fashion. A murmur of surprise ran round the Court, an excited whispering and twittering, which the usher hastened to suppress.
Seen in that November gloom, the witness looked like Grace Perivale's double.
Kate Delmaine! There were some among the wigs and gowns, and some among the smart audience who remembered her in her brief career, a girl of startling beauty, whose dazzling smile had beamed across the footlights at the Spectacular Theatre for a season or two. They had seen, admired, and forgotten her. She rose before them like the ghost of their youth.
"Will you tell me where you were living last February, Miss Delmaine?" Sir Joseph began quietly, when her carmine lips had hovered over the Book: "from the 7th to the 25th?"
"I was at the Mecca Hotel, in Algiers."
"Alone?"
"No. Colonel Rannock was with me."
"You were in Corsica and in Sardinia before that, I believe?"