When his mother rose, Val had a tremendous impulse to rise too and say:  ‘Look here!  I’m going to see you jolly well treat her decently.’  He subdued it, however; heard her saying, ’the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,’ and looked up.  She made a rich figure of it, in her furs and large hat, with a slight flush on her cheek-bones, calm, matter-of-fact; and he felt proud of her thus confronting all these ‘confounded lawyers.’  The examination began.  Knowing that this was only the preliminary to divorce, Val followed with a certain glee the questions framed so as to give the impression that she really wanted his father back.  It seemed to him that they were ‘foxing Old Bagwigs finely.’

And he received a most unpleasant jar when the Judge said suddenly: 

“Now, why did your husband leave you—­not because you called him ’the limit,’ you know?”

Val saw his uncle lift his eyes to the witness box, without moving his face; heard a shuffle of papers behind him; and instinct told him that the issue was in peril.  Had Uncle Soames and the old buffer behind made a mess of it?  His mother was speaking with a slight drawl.

“No, my Lord, but it had gone on a long time.”

“What had gone on?”

“Our differences about money.”

“But you supplied the money.  Do you suggest that he left you to better his position?”

‘The brute!  The old brute, and nothing but the brute!’ thought Val suddenly.  ‘He smells a rat he’s trying to get at the pastry!’ And his heart stood still.  If—­if he did, then, of course, he would know that his mother didn’t really want his father back.  His mother spoke again, a thought more fashionably.

“No, my Lord, but you see I had refused to give him any more money.  It took him a long time to believe that, but he did at last—­and when he did....”

“I see, you had refused.  But you’ve sent him some since.”

“My Lord, I wanted him back.”

“And you thought that would bring him?”

“I don’t know, my Lord, I acted on my father’s advice.”

Something in the Judge’s face, in the sound of the papers behind him, in the sudden crossing of his uncle’s legs, told Val that she had made just the right answer.  ‘Crafty!’ he thought; ’by Jove, what humbug it all is!’

The Judge was speaking: 

“Just one more question, Mrs. Dartie.  Are you still fond of your husband?”

Val’s hands, slack behind him, became fists.  What business had that Judge to make things human suddenly?  To make his mother speak out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn’t know herself, before all these people!  It wasn’t decent.  His mother answered, rather low:  “Yes, my Lord.”  Val saw the Judge nod.  ’Wish I could take a cock-shy at your head!’ he thought irreverently, as his mother came back to her seat beside him.  Witnesses to his father’s departure and continued absence followed—­one of their own maids even, which struck Val as particularly beastly; there was more talking, all humbug; and then the Judge pronounced the decree for restitution, and they got up to go.  Val walked out behind his mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level best to despise everybody.  His mother’s voice in the corridor roused him from an angry trance.