Her ladyship looked at him wildly. “The court?” she cried. “Do you mean that I shall have to give evidence?”
“Naturally,” he answered. “You will have to say what you saw.”
“But—but I saw nothing.”
“Something, I think.”
“Yes; but nothing that can matter.”
“Still the court will wish to hear it and perhaps to examine you upon it.”
“Oh no, no!” In her alarm she half rose, then sank again to her chair. “You must keep me out of this, Terence. I couldn’t—I really couldn’t.”
He laughed with an affectation of indulgence, masking something else.
“Why,” he said, “you would not deprive Tremayne of any of the advantages to be derived from your testimony? Are you not ready to bear witness as to his character? To swear that from your knowledge of the man you are sure he could not have done such a thing? That he is the very soul of honour, a man incapable of anything base or treacherous or sly?”
And then at last Sylvia, who had been watching them, and seeking to apply to what she heard the wild expressions that Sir Terence had used to herself last night, broke into the conversation.