He looked at her earnestly.  The slight, involuntary changes of expression in Lady Lucy, as he was speaking, made him say to himself:  “She is not indifferent to the social stigma—­she deceives herself!” But he made no sign of his perception; he held her to her word.

She paused, in evident hesitation, saying at last, with some coldness: 

“If you wish it, Sir James, of course I am quite ready to listen.  I desire to do nothing harshly.”

“I will not keep you long.”

Bending forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes upon the ground, he thought a moment.  When he began to speak, it was in a quiet and perfectly colorless tone.

“I knew Juliet Wentworth first—­when she was seventeen.  I was on the Midland Circuit, and went down to the Milchester Assizes.  Her father was High Sheriff, and asked me, with other barristers of the Circuit, not only to his official dinner in the county town, but to luncheon at his house, a mile or two away.  There I saw Miss Wentworth.  She made a deep impression on me.  After the Assizes were over, I stayed at her father’s house and in the neighborhood.  Within a month I proposed to her.  She refused me.  I merely mention these circumstances for the sake of reporting my first impressions of her character.  She was very young, and of an extraordinarily nervous and sensitive organization.  She used to remind me of Horace’s image of the young fawn trembling and starting in the mountain paths at the rustling of a leaf or the movement of a lizard.  I felt then that her life might very well be a tragedy, and I passionately desired to be able to protect and help her.  However, she would have nothing to do with me, and after a little while I lost sight of her.  I did happen to hear that her father, having lost his first wife, had married again, that the girl was not happy at home, and had gone off on a long visit to some friends in the United States.  Then for years I heard nothing.  One evening, about ten years after my first meeting with her, I read in the evening papers the accounts of a ‘Supposed Murder at Brighton.’  Next morning Riley & Bonner retained me for the defence.  Mr. Riley came to see me, with Mr. Sparling, the husband of the incriminated lady, and it was in the course of my consultation with them that I learned who Mrs. Sparling was.  I had to consider whether to take up the case or not; I saw at once it would be a fight for her life, and I accepted it.”

“What a terrible—­terrible—­position!” murmured Lady Lucy, who was shading her eyes with her hand.

Sir James took no notice.  His trained mind and sense were now wholly concerned with the presentation of his story.