“Really,” said Priam.

He had made love to this woman.  He had kissed her.  They had promised to marry each other.  It was a piece of wild folly on his part; but, in the eyes of an impartial person, folly could not excuse his desertion of her, his flight from her intellectual charms.  His gaze pierced her veil.  No, she was not quite so old as Alice.  She was not more plain than Alice.  She certainly knew more than Alice.  She could talk about pictures without sticking a knife into his soul and turning it in the wound.  She was better dressed than Alice.  And her behaviour on the present occasion, candid, kind, correct, could not have been surpassed by Alice.  And yet...  Her demeanour was without question prodigiously splendid in its ignoring of all that she had gone through.  And yet...  Even in that moment of complicated misery he had enough strength to hate her because he had been fool enough to make love to her.  No excuse whatever for him, of course!

“I was in India when I first heard of this case,” Lady Sophia continued.  “At first I thought it must be a sort of Tichborne business over again.  Then, knowing you as I did, I thought perhaps it wasn’t.”

“And as Lady Sophia happens to be in London now,” put in Mr. Oxford, “she is good enough to give her invaluable evidence on my behalf.”

“That is scarcely the way to describe it,” said Lady Sophia coldly.  “I am only here because you compel me to be here by subpoena.  It is all due to your acquaintanceship with my aunt.”

“Quite so, quite so!” Mr. Oxford agreed.  “It naturally can’t be very agreeable to you to have to go into the witness-box and submit to cross-examination.  Certainly not.  And I am the more obliged to you for your kindness, Lady Sophia.”

Priam comprehended the situation.  Lady Sophia, after his supposed death, had imparted to relatives the fact of his engagement, and the unscrupulous scoundrel, Mr. Oxford, had got hold of her and was forcing her to give evidence for him.  And after the evidence, the joke of every man in the street would be to the effect that Priam Farll, rather than marry the skinny spinster, had pretended to be dead.

“You see,” Mr. Oxford added to him, “the important point about Lady Sophia’s evidence is that in Paris she saw both you and your valet—­the valet obviously a servant, and you obviously his master.  There can, therefore, be no question of her having been deceived by the valet posing as the master.  It is a most fortunate thing that by a mere accident I got on the tracks of Lady Sophia in time.  In the nick of time.  Only yesterday afternoon!”

No reference by Mr. Oxford to Priam’s obstinacy in the matter of collars.  He appeared to regard Priam’s collar as a phenomenon of nature, such as the weather, or a rock in the sea, as something to be accepted with resignation!  No sign of annoyance with Priam!  He was the prince of diplomatists, was Mr. Oxford.