"'A quarter of an hour or so afterwards Mrs. Levison dismissed me and I heard her locking her door after me. I went downstairs on my way to the kitchen: Mrs. Aaron was in the parlour then, fully dressed and with her cloak on; and Mr. Reuben was there, too, talking to her. The door was wide open, and I saw them both and I heard Mrs. Aaron say quite spiteful like: "So she would not even see you, the old cat! She must have felt bad." And Mr. Reuben he laughed and said: "Oh well, she will have to get over it." Then they saw me and stopped talking, and soon afterwards Mr. Reuben went out to call a taxi, and we girls went up to bed.' "'It is all a wicked lie!' here broke in a loud, high-pitched voice, and Mrs. Aaron, trembling with excitement, jumped to her feet. 'A lie, I say. The woman is spiteful, and wants to ruin me.' "The coroner vainly demanded silence, and after a moment or two of confusion and of passionate resistance the lovely Rebecca was forcibly led out of the room. Her husband followed her, looking bigger and more meek and apologetic than ever before; and Ida Griggs was left to conclude her evidence in peace. She reaffirmed all that she had said and swore positively to the incident just as it had occurred in Mrs. Levison's room. Asked somewhat sharply by the coroner why she had said nothing about all this before, she replied that she did not wish to make mischief, but that truth was truth, and whoever murdered her poor mistress must swing for it, and that's all about it. "Nor could any cross-examination upset her: she looked like a spiteful cat, but not like a woman who was lying. "Reuben Levison had sat on, serene and jaunty, all the while that these damaging statements were being made against him. When he was recalled he contented himself with flatly denying Ida Griggs's story, and reiterating his own. "'The girl is lying,' he said airily, 'why she does so I don't know, but there was nothing in the world more unlikely than that my mother should at any time refuse to see me. Ask any impartial witness you like,' he went on dramatically, 'they will all tell you that my mother worshipped me: she was not likely to quarrel with me over a few bits of jewellery.' "Of course Mrs. Aaron, when she was recalled, corroborated Reuben's story. She could not make out why Ida should tell such lies about her. "'But there,' she added, with tears in her beautiful dark eyes, 'the girl always hated me.'