Tightly compressing her lips she sat silent in the chair, while the delighted reporters scribbled furious messages to their city editors that Miss Althea Beekman, one of the Four Hundred, was defying Judge Babson, and to rush up a camera man right off in a taxi, and to look her up in the morgue for a front-page story.  O’Brien glanced uneasily at Babson.  Possible defiance on the part of this usually unassuming lady had not entered into his calculations.  The judge took a new tack.

“You probably do not fully understand the situation in which you are placed,” he explained.  “You are not responsible for the law.  Neither are you responsible in any way for the consequences to this defendant, whatever they may be.  The matter is entirely out of your hands.  You are compelled to do as the court orders.  As a law-abiding citizen you have no choice in the matter.”

Miss Althea’s modest intellect reeled, but she stood her ground, the ghost of the Signer at her elbow.

“I am sorry,” she replied, “but my own self-respect will not allow me to answer.”

“In that case,” declared Babson, playing his trump card, “it will be my unpleasant duty to commit you for contempt.”

There was a bustle of excitement about the reporters’ table.  Here was a story!

“Very well,” answered Miss Beekman proudly.  “Do as you see fit, and as your own duty and conscience demand.”

The judge could not conceal his annoyance.  The last thing in the world that he wished to do was to send Miss Althea to jail.  But having threatened her he must carry out his threat or forever lose face.

“I will give the witness until tomorrow morning at half after ten o’clock to make up her mind what she will do,” he announced after a hurried conference with O’Brien.  “Adjourn court!”

Miss Beekman did not go to bed at all that night.  Until a late hour she conferred in the secrecy of her Fifth Avenue library with her gray-haired solicitor, who, in some mysterious way, merely over the telephone, managed to induce the newspapers to omit any reference to his client’s contemptuous conduct in their morning editions.

“There’s no way out of it, my dear,” he said finally as he took his leave—­he was her father’s cousin and very fond of her—­“this judge has the power to send you to jail if he wants to—­and dares to!  It’s an even chance whether he will dare to or not.  It depends on whether he prefers to stand well with the McGurks or with the general public.  Of course I respect your attitude, but really I think you are a little quixotic.  Points of honor are too ephemeral to be debated in courts of justice.  To do so would be to open the door to all kinds of abuses.  Dishonest witnesses would constantly avail themselves of the opportunity to avoid giving evidence.”

“Dishonest witnesses would probably lie in the first place!” she quavered.

“True!  I quite overlooked that!” he smiled, gazing down at her in an avuncular manner.  “But to-day the question isn’t open.  It is settled, whether we like it or not.  No pledge of privacy, no oath of secrecy—­can avail against demand in a court of justice.  Even confessions obtained by fraud are admissible—­though we might wish otherwise.”