“I did.”

“As a gentleman who had given his promise to help and protect a lady, in the absence of the person whom she had depended on to join her, he refused to leave you to shift by yourself?”

“Unhappily, he refused on that account.”

“From first to last, you were absolutely innocent of the slightest intention to marry Mr. Brinkworth?”

“I answer, Sir Patrick, as Mr. Brinkworth has answered.  No such thing as the thought of marrying him ever entered my head.”

“And this you say, on your oath as a Christian woman?”

“On my oath as a Christian woman.”

Sir Patrick looked round at Blanche.  Her face was hidden in her hands.  Her step-mother was vainly appealing to her to compose herself.

In the moment of silence that followed, Mr. Moy interfered in the interests of his client.

“I waive my claim, Sir Patrick, to put any questions on my side.  I merely desire to remind you, and to remind the company present, that all that we have just heard is mere assertion—­on the part of two persons strongly interested in extricating themselves from a position which fatally compromises them both.  The marriage which they deny I am now waiting to prove—­not by assertion, on my side, but by appeal to competent witnesses.”

After a brief consultation with her own solicitor, Lady Lundie followed Mr. Moy, in stronger language still.

“I wish you to understand, Sir Patrick, before you proceed any farther, that I shall remove my step-daughter from the room if any more attempts are made to harrow her feelings and mislead her judgment.  I want words to express my sense of this most cruel and unfair way of conducting the inquiry.”

The London lawyer followed, stating his professional approval of his client’s view.  “As her ladyship’s legal adviser,” he said, “I support the protest which her ladyship has just made.”

Even Captain Newenden agreed in the general disapproval of Sir Patrick’s conduct.  “Hear, hear!” said the captain, when the lawyer had spoken.  “Quite right.  I must say, quite right.”

Apparently impenetrable to all due sense of his position, Sir Patrick addressed himself to Mr. Moy, as if nothing had happened.

“Do you wish to produce your witnesses at once?” he asked.  “I have not the least objection to meet your views—­on the understanding that I am permitted to return to the proceedings as interrupted at this point.”

Mr. Moy considered.  The adversary (there could be no doubt of it by this time) had something in reserve—­and the adversary had not yet shown his hand.  It was more immediately important to lead him into doing this than to insist on rights and privileges of the purely formal sort.  Nothing could shake the strength of the position which Mr. Moy occupied.  The longer Sir Patrick’s irregularities delayed the proceedings, the more irresistibly the plain facts of the case would assert themselves—­with all the force of contrast—­out of the mouths of the witnesses who were in attendance down stairs.  He determined to wait.