'His advice is the same as that which, as I mentioned this afternoon, Levine gave when I told him of the circumstances, and which I have no doubt he will repeat when he has further thought the matter over, namely, that unless we can obtain some evidence to support your denial, we have no chance of obtaining a verdict if we go into court. Danvers says that, of course, to those who know you, the idea of your taking these diamonds is absolutely preposterous; still, as the jury will not know you, and the public who read the report will not know you, they can only go by the evidence. He says that trying to look at it as a stranger, his opinion would be that it was an extraordinary case, but that unless we believed thoroughly that you had not taken the things, we should never have taken so hopeless a case into court. Still, he thinks that the verdict of those who only look at the outside of things would be that the denial was almost worse than the act. Had it not been for the unfortunate rumours previously circulated, many people might be of opinion that it was a case of kleptomania, and that no woman in her senses would have thus openly carried the things away from a place where she was well known.' 'I see all that, father; the more I have thought it over, the more I feel that it is certain that every one will be against me.' 'Then in that case, Dorothy, why fight a battle we are certain to lose? From the money point of view alone, it would be better to pay this twenty-five hundred pounds than the twenty-five hundred pounds plus the costs on both sides, which we might put down roughly at another thousand. If we pay it now, the matter may never become public, for even if the scoundrel was malicious enough to try and get a rumour about it into one of these so-called society papers I should doubt whether he could do so. In the last case they got the report, no doubt, from some one in Scotland Yard, but no editor would be mad enough to risk an action for libel with tremendous damages merely on an anonymous report, or at best, a report given only on the authority of an impecunious hanger-on of the turf. It seems to me, therefore, that we should have everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by bringing the matter into court.' 'But the same thing may be done again, father; if they have succeeded so well now they are sure to try and repeat it.'