I had an impression that he was going to offer to fight me.  I certainly hoped that he would.

“Very well,” I agreed.

But when he spoke again, I realised that it was as a lawyer and not as a fighter.  He had, indeed, been preparing a cautious impeachment of me.  We had reached the entrance to the avenue before he began, and the cloister of its cool shade seemed a sufficiently appropriate setting for his forensic diplomacy.  Outside, in the glare of the brilliant August sun, I should have flared out at him.  In the solemnity of that Gothic aisle, I found influences which helped me to maintain a relative composure.

He posed his first question with an assumed indifference.

“Why didn’t you sleep in the house last night?” he asked.

I took time to consider my answer; I was taken aback by his knowledge of the fact he had disclosed.  My first impulse was to retort “How do you know that I didn’t sleep in the house?” but I was determined to be very cautious at the outset of this cross-examination.  Obviously he meant it to take the form of a cross-examination.  I was equally determined that I would presently reverse the parts of counsel and witness—­or was I the prisoner giving evidence on my own behalf?

We must have gone another fifteen or twenty deliberate paces before I replied,—­

“I’ll answer that question in a minute.  I should like to know first what grounds you have for stating that I didn’t sleep in the house?”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “You admit that you didn’t?” he retorted.

“If you’re going to conduct your conversation on the principles of the court room,” I said, “the only thing I can do is to adopt the same method.”

He ignored that.  “You admit that you didn’t sleep in the house?” he repeated.

“I’ll admit nothing until I know what the devil you’re driving at,” I replied.

He did not look at me.  He was saving himself until he reached the brow-beating stage.  But I was watching him—­we were walking a yard or two apart—­and I noted his expression of simulated indifference and forbearance, as he condescendingly admitted my claim to demand evidence for his preliminary accusation.

“You were very late coming down,” he began and paused, probably to tempt me into some ridicule of such a worthless piece of testimony.

“Go on,” I said.

“You were seen coming into the house after eight o’clock in the morning,” he continued, paused again and then, as I kept silence, added, “In evening dress.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

It was not.  He had kept the decisive accusation until the end.

“Your bed had not been slept in,” he concluded wearily, as if to say, “My good idiot, why persist in this damning assumption of innocence?”

“You’ve been examining the servants, I see,” I remarked.

He was not to be drawn by such an ingenuous sneer as that.  “The housekeeper told the mater when she came back from church,” he said.  “I suppose the thing came up in some arrangement of household affairs.”