Sacheverall produced his final witness, and she was damning. She might have called herself an adventuress, but she was little more than an unpleasantly ambitious prostitute, both experienced and astute as to the appetites of men and women. She had no doubt whatever that Wolff and Melville were lovers. She had seen them embracing and her evidence was possibly the more unpleasant because her entire manner showed that she saw nothing wrong in it. She did not imply it was casual or the satisfaction of a physical appetite alone, but she used the word lovers because she meant the fullness of that emotion.

There was nothing for Rathbone to do. He was completely beaten. It was not merely in Sacheverall's jubilant face but in the grim disgust of the majority of the jurors as well. Even those few who might have felt either pity or a sense that it was a private matter and not a public concern could not argue the issue that Killian Melville had broken his promise to marry Zillah Lambert because of a fault that lay within himself. He had deceived her as to his nature and his intentions and she had every right to demand and to receive reparation from him for the slight to her honor and her reputation.

Rathbone looked across to where she sat beside her father. Her expression was completely unguarded. Disbelief and confusion were so naked those next to her were for once ashamed to stare. She barely understood what had been suggested. Rathbone doubted she was familiar with much of the intimacy of normal love, let alone that between man and man. Most girls of her age and station learned little before their wedding nights. He felt profoundly sorry for her. She sat rigid, staring straight ahead as if at some disaster she could not tear herself from. He had seen such wide, fixed eyes and unmoving lips when he had had to tell people of unexpected deaths, or that a case was lost and they would face a fearful sentence. In that moment he had no doubt at all that Zillah had truly loved Melville, whether he was aware of it or not. However blindly, for whatever reason, it was a terrible wrong he had done her.

He looked at Barton Lambert beside her. His expression was completely different. His skin was red with anger and frustration. He turned one way then another, ignoring his wife, who was speaking quietly to him, her cheeks also flushed. Had either of them any idea what they had done to their daughter? Had they allowed their anger, their ambition, their intellectual understanding of the injury Melville had inflicted upon her to obscure any sensitivity or imagination to her inner world? She might have to live with the turmoil of thought and the pain of loss, of having been deceived and misled, of wondering what she had done to produce the wrong, or why she had failed to seek.