excellent. She told her story. She hinted at the insult. She spoke of
the check. She had imagined no harm in accepting Wingrave's invitation
to tea. Men and women of the hunt, who were on friendly terms, treated
one another as comrades. She spoke of the blow. She had seen it
delivered, and so on. And all the time, I sat within a few feet of
Wingrave, and I knew that in the black box before him were burning
love letters from this woman, to the man whose code of honor would
ever have protected her husband from disgrace; and I knew that I was
listening to the thing which you, Aynesworth, and many of your fellow
story writers, have so wisely and so ignorantly dilated upon--the
vengeance of a woman denied. Only I heard the words themselves, cold,
earnest words, fall one by one from her lips like a sentence of
doom--and there was life in the thing, life and death! When she had
finished, the whole court was in a state of tension. Everyone was
leaning forward. It would be the most piquant, the most wonderful
cross examination every heard--the woman lying to save her honor and
to achieve her vengeance; the man on trial for his life. Wingrave
stood up. Lady Ruth raised her veil, and looked at him from the
witness box. There was the most intense silence I ever realized. Who
could tell the things which flashed from one to the other across the
dark well of the court; who could measure the fierce, silent scorn
which seemed to blaze from his eyes, as he held her there--his slave
until he chose to give the signal for release? At last he looked away
towards the judge, and the woman fell forward in the box gasping, a
crumpled up, nerveless heap of humanity.

"'My lord,' he said, 'I have no questions to ask this witness!'

"Everyone staggered. Wingrave's few friends were horrified. After that
there was, of course, no hope for him. He got fifteen years' penal