[CHAPTER XXIII.]
ONE MORE ATTEMPT.
"That man again!" Lady Woodroffe threw the card into the fire. "Tell him I will not see him. No. Let him come up."
It was Richard Woodroffe, proposing to make his last attempt. Before doing so, he had run down to Birmingham and seen the newly-found witness. He was a most trustworthy person; he picked out the photograph of Lady Woodroffe from a bundle of photographs; he remembered the case and the lady perfectly well. There was, therefore, no doubt possible that she had been in Birmingham at that time, and that she had lost her own son.
"Sir"—she sat up in her chair with angry eyes—"this is persecution! I have already given a patient hearing to your most impudent story."
"You have, Lady Woodroffe." Neither her angry looks nor her presence disconcerted him now. He was so perfectly certain of his cause, and of her shameless falsehood, that he stood before her at ease, and even with some appearance of dignity.
"I even took the trouble to invite your friend, the person for whom you profess to act, the woman with the delusion——"
"You did." He did not wait to be invited. He took a chair and sat down in it.
"In order to convince her of her absurdity."
"In which you failed. Because, after all your talk, there remained the solid fact—the death of Sir Humphrey's son."