‘You must tell me or I’ll kill myself—I give you my word!’ Laura said to her brother-in-law, with unnecessary violence, as soon as they had left the room.

‘I say, I say,’ he rejoined, ‘you are a wilful one! What do you want to threaten me for? Don’t you know me well enough to know that ain’t the way? That’s the tone Selina used to take. Surely you don’t want to begin and imitate her!’ She only sat there, looking at him, while he leaned against the chimney-piece smoking a short cigar. There was a silence, during which she felt the heat of a certain irrational anger at the thought that a little ignorant, red-faced jockey should have the luck to be in the right as against her flesh and blood. She considered him helplessly, with something in her eyes that had never been there before—something that, apparently, after a moment, made an impression on him. Afterwards, however, she saw very well that it was not her threat that had moved him, and even at the moment she had a sense, from the way he looked back at her, that this was in no manner the first time a baffled woman had told him that she would kill herself. He had always accepted his kinship with her, but even in her trouble it was part of her consciousness that he now lumped her with a mixed group of female figures, a little wavering and dim, who were associated in his memory with ‘scenes,’ with importunities and bothers. It is apt to be the disadvantage of women, on occasions of measuring their strength with men, that they may perceive that the man has a larger experience and that they themselves are a part of it. It is doubtless as a provision against such emergencies that nature has opened to them operations of the mind that are independent of experience. Laura felt the dishonour of her race the more that her brother-in-law seemed so gay and bright about it: he had an air of positive prosperity, as if his misfortune had turned into that. It came to her that he really liked the idea of the public éclaircissement—the fresh occupation, the bustle and importance and celebrity of it. That was sufficiently incredible, but as she was on the wrong side it was also humiliating. Besides, higher spirits always suggest finer wisdom, and such an attribute on Lionel’s part was most humiliating of all. ‘I haven’t the least objection at present to telling you what you want to know. I shall have made my little arrangements very soon and you will be subpoenaed.’

‘Subpoenaed?’ the girl repeated, mechanically.

‘You will be called as a witness on my side.’

‘On your side.’

‘Of course you’re on my side, ain’t you?’

‘Can they force me to come?’ asked Laura, in answer to this.