Annandale got from the stand. Others succeeded him there, experts for the defense, men who recited their qualities and degrees as though they were eating truffles to the sound of trumpets. One after another they testified that liquor can ablate memory partially, wholly; can ablate it regarding events antecedent and subsequent to a rememorated point between; can, moreover, leave the subject in a condition apparently normal yet actually in a state of trance. "Do you really regard these people as experts?" Peacock with pitying contempt asked of Orr. Then at once in rebuttal were other experts, equally pleased with themselves, humorously disposing of psychical epilepsy, affecting to regard it as a medicolegal myth. Among the spectators the usual jest circulated. The mendacious were subdivided into liars, damned liars, expert witnesses. Yet there you were. But not Orr. Tortuously he involved the deponents in helpful contradictions, smiling at them, at Peacock and the jury, smiling with an air of saying "You see what confounded idiots these imbeciles are." But the session was closing. One more witness remained to be called. "Miss Waldron, will you take the stand?" With the charming manner of the thoroughbred New York girl Sylvia circled the room. It was refreshing to see her, refreshing to hear the way in which she corroborated what Annandale had said. "But," objected Peacock, "you had just gone from his house; what did he go to yours for?" "To restore a string of pearls." "Did he repeat to you anything that he had said to his wife?" "Had he attempted to I should have refused to listen." "Was he drunk?" "I cannot say. I have never seen anyone in that condition." "Did he make any threats regarding Loftus?" "A gentleman does not make threats." "Miss Waldron, I will thank you to answer me directly. Did he or did he not?" "He did not." "You swear to that?" "I do." It was perjury, of course. Yet if a girl may not perjure herself like a lady for the man she loves things have come to a pretty pass. That idea apparently struck Peacock. "Prior to the defendant's marriage you were engaged to him, were you not?" "I was." "Are you engaged to him now?" Very prettily and gracefully, without embarrassment, rather with pride, Sylvia answered: "I am." "That's all," said Peacock. "The State rests." But as he said it he looked at the jury and sighed, sighed audibly, much as were he adding, "You may judge the value of her testimony from that." The resting, however, was but figurative. In a moment the summing up began, a summing which, at first passionless as algebra, dealt with technical points.