When the Judge at length finished with Dumeny and Dumeny’s relations with Mrs. Clarke, Dion felt very anxious about the verdict.  The Judge had not succeeded in making him believe that Mrs. Clarke was a guilty woman, but he feared that the jury had been made doubtful.  It was evident to him that the Judge had a bad opinion of Dumeny, and had conveyed his opinion to the jury.  Was the unwisdom of Mrs. Clarke to prove her undoing?  Esme Darlington was pulling his ducal beard almost nervously.  A faint hum went through the densely packed court.  Mrs. Chetwinde moved and used her fan for a moment.  Dion did not dare to look at Guy Daventry.  He was realizing, with a sort of painful sharpness, how great a change a verdict against Mrs. Clarke must make in her life.

Her boy, perhaps, probably indeed, would be taken from her.  She had only spoken to him casually about her boy, but he had felt that the casual reference did not mean that she had a careless heart.  The woman whose hand had held his for a moment would be tenacious in love.  He felt sure of that, and sure that she loved her naughty boy with a strong vitality.

When the Judge had finished his task and the jury retired to consider their verdict, it was past four o’clock.

“What do you think?” Dion said in a low voice to Mrs. Chetwinde.

“About the summing-up?”

“Yes.”

“It has left things very much as I expected.  Any danger there is lies in Monsieur Dumeny.”

“Do you know him?”

“Oh, yes.  I stayed with Cynthia once in Constantinople.  He took us about.”

She made no further comment on Monsieur Dumeny.

“I wonder whether the jury will be away long?” Dion said, after a moment.

“Probably.  I shan’t be at all surprised if they can’t agree.  Then there will be another trial.”

“How appalling!”

“Yes, it wouldn’t be very nice for Cynthia.”

“I can’t help wishing——­”

He paused, hesitating.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Chetwinde, looking about the court.

“I can’t help wishing Mrs. Clarke hadn’t been unconventional in quite such a public way.”

A faint smile dawned and faded on Mrs. Chetwinde’s lips and in her pale eyes.

“The public method’s often the safest in the end,” she murmured.

Then she nodded to Esme Darlington, who presently got up and managed to make his way to them.  He, too, thought the jury would probably disagree, and considered the summing-up rather unfavorable to Mrs. Clarke.

“People who live in the diplomatic world live in a whispering gallery,” he said, bending down, speaking in an under-voice and lifting and lowering his eyebrows.  “I told Cynthia so when she married.  I ventured to give her the benefit of my—­if I may say so—­long and intimate knowledge of diplomatic life and diplomatists.  I said to her, ’Remember you can always be under observation.’  Ah, well—­one can only hope the jury will take the right view.  But how can we expect British shopkeepers, fruit brokers, cigar merchants, and so forth to understand a—­really, one can only say—­a wild nature like Cynthia’s?  It’s a wild mind—­I’d say this before her!—­in an innocent body, just that.”