"You are identified by your photograph. You forget that."
"Can I? After four and twenty years? Can any woman of my age—forty-nine—be identified, by a stranger, with another woman of twenty-five or thereabouts? Now, Mr. Richard Woodroffe, what else have you got to say?"
"I have only this to say. I came here to-day, Lady Woodroffe, in the hope that what I have told you would show you the danger of your position. For the sake of this lady, who is worn almost to death by the anxiety of her situation, I hoped that you would confess."
"Confess! I to confess! You speak as if I were a common criminal."
"No," said Richard, "not common by any means."
Lady Woodroffe left her chair and stepped over to the fireplace. She looked older, and the authority went out of her very strangely. She laid her hand on the shelf, as if for support, and she spoke slowly—with no show of anger—slowly, and with sadness.
"I think, sir, I do think, that if you could consider the meaning of this charge to a person in my position, the suffering you inflict upon me, the mischief you may do to me, and I know not how many more, by persisting in this charge, you would abandon it."
"I cannot; I am acting for another."
"You are playing a game to win. I don't accuse you of sordid motives. You want to win."
"Perhaps I do."