Chapter 48

‘Give me the daggers.’ For sheer audacity her performance must stand alone. With an air of the most artless and childlike innocence, she left no stone unturned to glorify the defendant and bring the plaintiff and her cause into contempt. Tristram could do nothing with her. Faithfully maintaining the demeanour of a scandalized nun, she omitted no circumstance of outrage. Misrepresentation, ridicule, abuse flowed from her guileless answers with the winning simplicity of a mountain rill. Her manifest reluctance to con…