'
'That's another thing! But as the cheque did not alter itself, one of
the three must have done it, and nothing was left but to show that
there had been an amount of shuffling, and--in short, nonsense--that
might cast enough doubt on their evidence to make it insufficient for a
conviction.'
'Reginald! I can't think how you can stand up for such a wretch, a
vulgar wretch,' cried Miss Mohun. 'You put it delicately, as a
gentleman who had the misfortune to be counsel in such a case might do,
but he was infinitely worse than that, though that was bad enough.'
'It was Yokes,' put in Mr. Mohun; 'but what did he say?' looking
anxiously at his daughter.
'It was not so bad about her,' said her uncle, 'he only made her out a
foolish child, easily played upon by everybody, and possibly ignorant
and frightened, or led away by her regard for her supposed relation.
It was the other poor girl--
'The amiable susceptibilities of romantic young ladies!' broke out Lady
Merrifield. 'Oh, the creature!' To think of that poor foolish
Constance sitting by to hear it represented that the expedition to
Darminster, and all the rest of it, was because she was actually
touched by that fellow. I really felt ready to take her part.'
'She had certainly brought it on herself,' said Aunt Jane; 'but it was
atrocious of him and if the other counsel had only known it, he stopped
the cross examination just at the wrong time, or it would have come out
that it was literary vanity that was the lure.
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