"A what?" asked the judge.
"A well-cared for young girl, my lord."
"Yes?" Kevin said. "And how long did this idyll in Larborough persist?"
"It turned out that we were leaving Larborough on the same day. She was going back to her people because her holiday was over-she had already extended it so that she could run about with me-and I was due to fly to Copenhagen on business. She then said she had no intention of going home and asked me to take her with me. I said nothing doing. I didn't think she was so much of an innocent child as she seemed in the lounge at the Midland-I knew her better by that time-but I still thought she was inexperienced. She was only sixteen, after all."
"She told you she was sixteen."
"She had her sixteenth birthday in Larborough," Chadwick said with a wry twist of the mouth under the small dark moustache. "It cost me a gold lipstick."
Robert looked across at Mrs. Wynn and saw her cover her face with her hands. Leslie Wynn, sitting beside her, looked unbelieving and blank.
"You had no idea that actually she was still fifteen."
"No. Not until the other day."
"So when she made the suggestion that she should go with you you considered her an inexperienced child of sixteen."