Cleek sucked in his breath and stood a moment eyeing the Hindoo. If that were so—but the thought was too utterly horrible to be longer entertained.
There followed the sound of a little cry echoing across the crowded room. Cleek's eyes went in the direction of it, and saw that Lady Brenton had gone dead white, and that her lips were pinched and blue. Sir Edgar, in a sort of mad abandonment, was pushing his way up through the audience, his eyes flashing, his fists clenched, the red blood flaring in his face, and all his virile young manhood up in defence of the woman he loved.
"Say that again, you damned liar, and I'll thrash you within an inch of your precious life!" he shouted. "You can't prove it—you absolutely can't, I say! It isn't her scarf at all——"
"And I say it is!" responded Gunga Dall with an unpleasant little laugh. "Because I happened to have given it to her myself and——"
"You take care what you're saying," returned Sir Edgar in a passion of white heat. "You dare to suggest that you've given her presents."
The Coroner's upraised hand silenced him.
"If you please," he began, "permit Mr. Dall to continue with his evidence without interruption. This is hardly the time or the place, Sir Edgar, for the airing of one's particular—er—differences. You say the scarf belongs to Lady Margaret Cheyne, Mr. Dall?"
"I do. For I myself gave it to her. I met her on the journey over from Boulogne to Folkestone, and I happened to show the scarf to her. She admired it, and on the impulse of the moment I pressed her to accept it. It was one of a pair."
Of a pair, eh? So there was the loophole of escape for Lady Margaret after all. Cleek's head went up.
The coroner leant a little forward in his seat and stared up into the Hindoo's impassive countenance.