"You are faced with the possibility that we have been lying."
"Really, Marion!" he said impatiently, using her name for the first time and not noticing that he had used it. "What I am faced with, if anything, is the choice between your word and the word of Rose Glyn's friends."
But she did not appear to be listening. "I wish," she said passionately, "oh, how I wish that we had one small, just one small piece of evidence on our side! She gets away-that girl gets away with everything, everything. We keep on saying 'It is not true, but we have no way of showing that it is not true. It is all negative. All inconclusive. All feeble denial. Things combine to back up her lies, but nothing happens to help prove that we are telling the truth. Nothing!"
"Sit down, Marion," her mother said. "A tantrum won't improve the situation."
"I could kill that girl; I could kill her. My God, I could torture her twice a day for a year and then begin again on New Year's day. When I think what she has done to us I—"
"Don't think," Robert interrupted. "Think instead of the day when she is discredited in open court. If I know anything of human nature that will hurt Miss Kane a great deal worse than the beating someone gave her."
"You still believe that that is possible?" Marion said incredulous.
"Yes. I don't quite know how we shall bring it about. But that we shall bring it about I do believe."
"With not one tiny piece of evidence for us, not one; and evidence just-just blossoming for her?"
"Yes. Even then."