Lord Arthur arrived with his solicitor. They stood talking for some moments, and finally sat down. Ronnie, looking up from his brief, could see their two heads, still conferring, below him to his left. The opposing K.C., Sir Martin Duckworth, a smooth-faced, smooth-voiced politician, arrived in a very new silk gown, and asked audibly of his junior if he'd seen the plaintiff. The plaintiff and Sir Peter sidled to their places in front of the clerk's table, turning courteous backs on the defendant. Last of all, five seconds before the opening, Brunton rushed in. Aliette's husband, looking dignified enough in full legal trappings, nodded at Ronnie; and leaned over to greet his client just as the bewigged clerk announced "Silence"; and Mr. Justice Mallory, a benevolent-looking old image--scarlet baldrick across his wide-sleeved gown, winking spectacles across his creased forehead--appeared through the curtain at the back of his daïs; was risen to by the court; and took his seat. Various barristers rose up; presented various applications; and sat down again to hear "Ellerson _v._ Ellerson" or withdrew--according to the degree of busyness they had attained. For Ellerson _v._ Ellerson, as "opened" a moment later by Hector Brunton, was more than a _cause célèbre_: it might, if fought to a decision, go down to legal history as a "test" case, a precedent established for all time. Wherefore the barristers--such as could--stayed. But the twelve men in the jury-box were not barristers. "His lordship," Brunton told them, "will direct you on the legal questions involved. All _I_ ask you to consider is this. If I prove, as I shall prove to you by the mouths of competent witnesses, that this unhappy, this innocent lady, my client, has been slandered, and vilely slandered--for, mark my words, there is no slander so vile as a slander on a woman's virtue--by the man at whose hands she has the right most to expect protection--by her husband: if I prove to you that, through this slander, she has suffered damage, intellectual damage, social damage, damage to her health and to her reputation: then, gentlemen, I hope you will demonstrate by your verdict that, in England at any rate, a wife is not her husband's property, his chattel to do with as he will, but a free citizeness, as much entitled to be protected from the slanders of her husband as from those of any other man or woman in this country." Brunton boomed on--his appeal all to sentiment. The judge drowsed. Ronnie, nonchalant behind his leader, could not help envying the even flow of his oratory. "If only I could speak like that," thought Ronnie vaguely. But suddenly, as the K.C. neared his peroration, Ronnie's nonchalance vanished. "Marriage," boomed Brunton, "is not slavery. A man, just because he happens to marry a woman, does not own her." "But he does," thought the junior; "in law he does own her. In law this man owns Aliette."