That he was standing on thin ice Thomas knew, and he knew also that bluff was the only feasible strategy to employ against the unforeseen crisis wrought by Bill's sudden and unexpected arrival. "Don't flatter yourself that I mind any question you might ask," he emphasized, "only this one has no bearing on the case." At this, Townsend sustained the objection. Marvin, resorting to a legal trick, changed the form of the question, for he was bound to prove his point. "Well, Miss Buckley," he asked, "Mr. Thomas has taken an interest in your affairs and given you advice?" The insinuation was more than Millie could bear calmly. She turned quickly, meeting his eyes in anger as she flashed a significant smile toward Thomas. "Mr. Thomas has been more than kind to me always. He has given me advice when I had no one else to turn to." "And you have always followed his advice?" Following his key, Millie replied, "Always, implicitly, in spite of what _others_--" and she paused long enough to send a pointed shaft Marvin's way--"have said against him." Marvin grinned and continued, "Miss Buckley, you have never known Mr. Jones to be cruel or even unkind to his wife, have you?" An objection from Thomas was overruled, the judge contending that cruelty was one of the grounds in the complaint. As he had forgotten how the question read, he asked the stenographer to repeat it. Millie answered in the negative and Marvin prodded her further, "You have never seen him unkind to any one or anything, have you?" Gentleness had always been such an ever-present quality in Bill's treatment of Millie that she forgot her anger for the moment and hastened to reply, as she smiled sweetly at Bill, "Daddy has always been most kind to me and every one else." This was an opportunity to lead her into an admission which might immediately quash all of the grounds of the complaint. Marvin saw it at once and took advantage of it. "Now, Miss Buckley," he argued, "the complaint asks for a divorce on the grounds of drunkenness, failure to provide and cruelty. In all honesty you know that not one of these is the real reason that Mrs. Jones has asked for a divorce, don't you?" Unused to the ways of the law and its peculiar methods of arriving at conclusions, Millie was perplexed. The only excuse in her mind for the divorce had been that it would bring about the sale of the property and that Mrs. Jones would thereby have sufficient money with which to find Bill, which would mean happiness for the three of them. Had Thomas not intervened with an objection which the judge sustained, she would have given her answer, but as it was she remained silent. Marvin, determined to prove Bill Jones's simple sweetness, so that he would at least be understood by the world, went to his purpose again. "Miss Buckley, you know that Mr. Jones loved his wife, loved her devotedly, don't you?" he asked.