“Why, Mr. Hammond!” Elinor’s handkerchief went straight to her eyes. “How can you talk—to me—like that? Can’t you see—I’m heart-broken?” Hugh had her in his arms instantly. “There, darling, don’t cry,” he said soothingly. He turned savagely to Hammond. “I won’t have you talking to her like that! She’s suffering enough—hasn’t she just told you she’s heart-broken?” “Well, then, let her be sensibly heart-broken!” Hammond brought his fist down upon the desk. “Can you imagine the light it is going to throw upon the case when this slip of a girl appears upon the scene in the garb of an inconsolable widow?” Elinor removed the handkerchief from her eyes—eyes that were hard behind the glistening of newly shed tears. Her voice was steely as she spoke, the toss of her head defiant. “I care nothing whatever about Howard!” she said. “You may as well understand that right now! I shall tell the truth, and nothing will induce me to alter my testimony. If things go against him, he will have to suffer the consequences—that’s all!” “But that is all I require of you—simply to tell the truth. There can’t be anything damaging in your testimony?” The lawyer was evidently a bit worried over Elinor’s peculiar attitude. “That depends entirely upon how you look at it,” she replied frigidly. “All I know is that Howard quarreled with me at home early in the evening, when I told him I was going to Templeton’s——” “I didn’t quarrel with you, Elinor,” Howard interrupted. “I merely told you what I thought of Druid, and tried to persuade you——” “I choose to call it quarreling,” she replied loftily, without permitting him to finish. “Well, what if he did quarrel with you when he discovered that you were associating with the wrong kind of a man?” Hammond spoke up. “That only goes to prove his brotherly love——” “Brotherly love! Brotherly devotion!” Elinor’s voice rose to a shriek. “I’m sick of the very words! Everyone knows how we have always disagreed! Why we were never in each other’s society for ten minutes without quarreling—even mother and dad can tell you that! And now everyone expects me to shout from the housetops and proclaim him my valiant defender!” She sneered and her most ardent admirer would not have called Elinor Benton beautiful at that moment of denouncing her brother. “Well, I refuse to do it!” she hastened on, and the stubbornness that had been her birthright was clearly in the ascendant as she spoke. “He killed the man I loved! You can never make me see anything heroic in that!” “Very well, then, if that’s your attitude, I see no use in my attempting to question you at all.” Hammond laid down his pen. “I can only trust to your sense of justice in answering the questions at the inquest. I have but one request to make, and that is that you will not deliberately try to place a false conception upon everything you say?” “You need never fear, Mr. Hammond,” she answered. “I shall be perfectly truthful.”