He remonstrated with her: he repeated over and over again his assurance that her defence was as perfect as a defence could be. She could not be examined or cross-examined. The evidence of the woman would be confined to one point. It was all in vain: she was obstinate.
'I shall plead Guilty,' she said.
Finally he went away and left me alone with her.
'Jenny,' I said, 'sometimes I believe you are mad so far as your own interests are concerned.'
'No, Will—only crafty. Now listen a little. I have one firm, strong, powerful friend—I mean Lord Brockenhurst. If a woman wants a man to remain in love with her, she must keep him off. He knows all about me, he says: he has made up the prettiest tale possible. And he actually believes it.'
'Made up a tale, Jenny?'
'It was a very pretty story that he wrote called the "Case of Clarinda," This is a prettier story still. It appears that I am the lost and stolen child of noble parents. My birth is stamped upon my face. Never a gipsy yet was known to have light hair like mine, and blue eyes like mine. I have been brought up in ignorance of my parentage, by a woman of dishonest character who stole me in infancy. She made me, against my wish (for a person of my rank naturally loathes employment so menial) an Orange Girl of Drury Lane Theatre. Then I rose above that station by the possession of parts inherited, and became an actress and the Toast of the Town. The woman clung to her pretended daughter still. Then I left the stage in order to be married: when I found my husband little better than a sordid gambler, I left his house and opened the Assembly-room: the woman, for her own safety, made, unknown to me, a storehouse of my garrets. That is his story. But the end is better still. My true nobility of soul, inherited from my unknown illustrious ancestors, prompts me to plead Guilty in order to save this pretended mother. Now, Will——'
'How does the story help?'
'Because it has already got abroad. Because it will incline everybody's heart to get me saved.'
'Yes—but an acquittal is so easy.'