'

'If I might explain----' I began, quivering.

He sneered. 'You have a genius for explaining, we are aware. Answer me
first, yes or no; we will qualify afterward.'

I glanced appealingly at the judge. He was adamant. 'Answer as counsel
directs you, witness,' he said, sternly.

'Yes, I am,' I faltered. 'But----'

'Excuse me one moment. You promised to marry him conditionally upon the
result of Mr. Ashurst's testamentary dispositions?'

'I did,' I answered; 'but----'

My explanation was drowned in roars of laughter, in which the judge
joined, in spite of himself. When the mirth in court had subsided a
little, I went on: 'I told Mr. Tillington I would only marry him in case
he was poor and without expectations. If he inherited Mr. Marmaduke
Ashurst's money, I could never be his wife,' I said it proudly.

The cross-eyed Q.C. drew himself up and let his rotundity take care of
itself. 'Do you take me,' he inquired, 'for one of Her Majesty's
horse-marines?'

There was another roar of laughter--feebly suppressed by a judicial
frown--and I slank away, annihilated.

'You can go,' my persecutor said. 'I think we have got--well, everything
we wanted from you. You promised to marry him, if all went ill! That is
a delicate feminine way of putting it. Women like these equivocations.
They relieve one from the onus of speaking frankly.'

I stood down from the box, feeling, for the first time in my life,
conscious of having scored an ignominious failure.

Our counsel did not care to re-examine me; I recognised that it would be
useless. The hateful Q.C. had put all my history in such an odious light
that explanation could only make matters worse--it must savour of
apology. The jury could never understand my point of view. It could
never be made to see that there are adventuresses and adventuresses.

Then came the final speeches on either side. Harold's advocate said the
best he could in favour of the will our party propounded; but his best
was bad; and what galled me most was this-- I could see he himself did
not believe in its genuineness. His speech amounted to little more than
a perfunctory attempt to put the most favourable face on a probable
forgery.

As for the cross-eyed Q.C., he rose to reply with humorous confidence.
Swaying his big body to and fro, he crumpled our will and our case in
his fat fingers like so much flimsy tissue-paper. Mr. Ashurst had made a
disposition of his property twenty years ago--the righ