'You admit he was in Florence. Good! Once more he turned up in India with my client, Lord Southminster, upon whose youth and inexperience he had managed to impose himself. And he carried him off, did he not, by one of these strange coincidences to which _you_ are peculiarly liable, on the very same steamer on which _you_ happened to be travelling?' 'Lord Southminster told me he took Higginson with him because a rogue suited his book,' I answered, warmly. 'Will you swear his lordship didn't say "_the_ rogue suited his book"--which is quite another thing?' the Q.C. asked blandly. 'I will swear he did not,' I replied. 'I have correctly reported him.' 'Then I congratulate you, young lady, on your excellent memory. My lud, will you allow me later to recall Lord Southminster to testify on this point?' The judge nodded. 'Now, once more, as to your relations with the various members of the Ashurst family. You introduced yourself to Lady Georgina Fawley, I believe, quite casually, on a seat in Kensington Gardens?' 'That is true,' I answered. 'You had never seen her before?' 'Never.' 'And you promptly offered to go with her as her lady's maid to Schlangenbad in Germany?' 'In place of her lady's maid, for one week,' I answered. 'Ah; a delicate distinction! "In place of her lady's maid." You are a lady, I believe; an officer's daughter, you told us; educated at Girton?' 'So I have said already,' I replied, crimson. 'And you stick to it? By all means. Tell--the truth--and stick to it. It's always safest. Now, don't you think it was rather an odd thing for an officer's daughter to do--to run about Germany as maid to a lady of title?' [Illustration: THE JURY SMILED.] I tried to explain once more; but the jury smiled. You can't justify originality to a British jury. Why, they would send you to prison at once for that alone, if they made the laws as well as dispensing them. He passed on after a while to another topic. 'I think you have boasted more than once in society that when you first met Lady Georgina Fawley you had twopence in your pocket to go round the world with?' 'I had,' I answered--'and I went round the world with it.' 'Exactly. I'm getting there in time. With it--and other things. A few months later, more or less, you were touring up the Nile in your steam dahabeeah, and in the lap of luxury; you were taking saloon-carriages on Indian railways, weren't you?' I explained again. 'The dahabeeah was in the service of the _Daily Telephone_,' I answered. 'I became a journalist.' He cross-questioned me about that. 'Then I am to understand,' he said at last, leaning forward with all his waistcoat, 'that you sprang yourself upon Mr. Elworthy at sight, pretty much as you sprang yourself upon Lady Georgina Fawley?' 'We arranged matters quickly,' I admitted. The dexterous wretch was making my strongest points all tell against me.