She came back to his side and sat down all shrunk into herself. Bowden’s counsel began outlining the defence, and Steer listened with his mouth a little open--an outrageous defence--for what did it amount to but a confession that the feller had played fast and loose! His client--said counsel--came into court not to defend this action but to express his regret as an honourable man for having caused the plaintiff distress, though not, he would submit, any material damage; for, now that they had seen her in the box, it would be absurd to suppose that what was called her ‘value in the marriage market’ had deteriorated. His client had come there to tell them the simple truth that, finding his feelings towards the plaintiff changed, he had considered it more honourable, wise and merciful to renounce his engagement before it was too late, sooner than enter into a union from the start doomed to an unhappiness, which, the gentlemen of the jury must remember, would, in the nature of men and things, fall far more heavily on the plaintiff than on the defendant himself. Though fully admitting his responsibility for the mistake he had made and the hastiness of which he had been guilty, the defendant believed they would give him credit for his moral courage in stopping before it was too late, and saving the plaintiff from the fiasco of a miserable marriage.... At the words ‘moral courage’ Steer had righted himself in his seat so suddenly that the Judge was seen to blink. ‘Moral courage!’ Wasn’t anybody going to tell those dodos there that the feller had been playing the rip with that cross-bred slut? Wasn’t anybody going to tell them that Bowden had put his son up to this to spite him--Steer? A sense of mystification and falsity muddled and enraged him; it was all bluff and blarney, like selling a horse....