‘And cast such imputations!’ exclaimed Aunt Jane. ‘I saw what the wretch was driving at all the time of the cross-examination; and if I’d been the judge, would not I have stopped him?’ ‘There you go. Lily and Jenny!’ said the colonel, ‘and Rotherwood just as bad! Why, Maurice would have had to take just the same line if he had been for the defence.’ ‘He would not have done it in such a blackguard fashion though,’ said Lord Rotherwood. ‘I saw what his defence would be,’ said Mr. Mohun, briefly. ‘There!’ said Colonel Mohun, with a boyish pleasure in confuting his sisters; but they were not subdued. ‘Now Maurice,’ cried Jane, ‘when that man was known to be utterly dishonourable and good for nothing, was it fair--was it not contrary to all common sense--to try to cast the imputation between those two poor girls? So the judge and jury felt it, I am happy to say! but I call it abominable to have thrown out the mere suggestion--’ ‘Nay now, Jane,’ said the colonel, ‘if the man was to be defended at all, how else was it to be done?’ ‘I wouldn’t have had him defended at all! but, unfortunately, that’s his right as an Englishman.’ ‘That’s another thing! But as the cheque did not alter itself, one of the three must have done it, and nothing was left but to show that there had been an amount of shuffling, and--in short, nonsense--that might cast enough doubt on their evidence to make it insufficient for a conviction.’ ‘Reginald! I can’t think how you can stand up for such a wretch, a vulgar wretch,’ cried Miss Mohun. ‘You put it delicately, as a gentleman who had the misfortune to be counsel in such a case might do, but he was infinitely worse than that, though that was bad enough.’ ‘It was Yokes,’ put in Mr. Mohun; ‘but what did he say?’ looking anxiously at his daughter. ‘It was not so bad about her,’ said her uncle, ‘he only made her out a foolish child, easily played upon by everybody, and possibly ignorant and frightened, or led away by her regard for her supposed relation. It was the other poor girl-- ‘The amiable susceptibilities of romantic young ladies!’ broke out Lady Merrifield. ‘Oh, the creature!’ To think of that poor foolish Constance sitting by to hear it represented that the expedition to Darminster, and all the rest of it, was because she was actually touched by that fellow. I really felt ready to take her part.’ ‘She had certainly brought it on herself,’ said Aunt Jane; ‘but it was atrocious of him and if the other counsel had only known it, he stopped the cross examination just at the wrong time, or it would have come out that it was literary vanity that was the lure. No doubt he would have made a laughing-stock of that, but it would not have been as bad as the other.’ ‘Poor thing,’ said Lady Merrifield; ‘it was a trying retribution for schoolgirl folly and want of conscientiousness. I should think she was a sadder and a wiser woman.’