He paused, hesitating.
“Yes?” said Mrs. Chetwinde, looking about the court.
“I can’t help wishing Mrs. Clarke hadn’t been unconventional in quite such a public way.”
A faint smile dawned and faded on Mrs. Chetwinde’s lips and in her pale eyes.
“The public method’s often the safest in the end,” she murmured.
Then she nodded to Esme Darlington, who presently got up and managed to make his way to them. He, too, thought the jury would probably disagree, and considered the summing-up rather unfavorable to Mrs. Clarke.
“People who live in the diplomatic world live in a whispering gallery,” he said, bending down, speaking in an under-voice and lifting and lowering his eyebrows. “I told Cynthia so when she married. I ventured to give her the benefit of my—if I may say so—long and intimate knowledge of diplomatic life and diplomatists. I said to her, ‘Remember you can always be under observation.’ Ah, well—one can only hope the jury will take the right view. But how can we expect British shopkeepers, fruit brokers, cigar merchants, and so forth to understand a—really, one can only say—a wild nature like Cynthia’s? It’s a wild mind—I’d say this before her!—in an innocent body, just that.”
He pulled almost distractedly at his beard with bony fingers, and repeated plaintively:
“A wild mind in an innocent body—h’m, ha!”
“If only Mr. Grundy can be brought to comprehension of such a phenomenon!” murmured Mrs. Chetwinde.