"I think that in the prisoner's interest perhaps Lady O'Moy will not
mind being distressed a little." It was at her he looked, and for
her and Tremayne alone that he intended the cutting lash of sarcasm
concealed from the rest of the court by his smooth accent. "Mullins has
said, I think, that her ladyship was on the balcony when he came into
the quadrangle. Her evidence therefore, takes us further back in point
of time than does Mullins's." Again the sarcastic double meaning was
only for those two. "Considering that the prisoner is being tried for
his life, I do not think we should miss anything that may, however
slightly, affect our judgment."

"Sir Terence is right, I think, sir," the judge-advocate supported.

"Very well, then," said the president. "Proceed, if you please."

"Will you be good enough to tell the court, Lady O'Moy, how you came to
be upon the balcony?"

Her pallor had deepened, and her eyes looked more than ordinarily large
and child-like as they turned this way and that to survey the members
of the court. Nervously she dabbed her lips with a handkerchief before
answering mechanically as she had been schooled:

"I heard a cry, and I ran out--"

"You were in bed at the time, of course?" quoth her husband,
interrupting.

"What on earth has that to do with it, Sir Terence?" the president
rebuked him, out of his earnest desire to cut this examination as short
as possible.

"The question, sir, does not seem to me to be without point," replied
O'Moy. He was judicially smooth and self-contained. "It is intended
to enable us to form an opinion as to the lapse of time between her
ladyship's hearing the cry and reaching the balcony."

Grudgingly the president admitted the point, and the question was
repeated.

"Ye-es," came Lady O'Moy's tremulous, faltering answer, "I was in bed."

"But not asleep--or were you asleep?" rapped O'Moy again, and in answer
to the president's impatient glance again explained himself: "We should
know whether perhaps the cry might not have been repeated several times
before her ladyship heard it. That is of value."

"It would be more regular," ventured the judge-advocate, "if Sir Terence
would reserve his examination of the witness until she has given her
evidence."

"Very well," grumbled Sir Terence, and he sat back, foiled for the
moment in his deliberate intent to torture her into admissions that must
betray her if made.

"I was not asleep," she told the court,