and rode home. She had been there over two hours and had changed into a more modest dress when Pitt finally came in. She was at the stove with dinner simmering. She waited for the blast, but it did not come.
'Where did you get the hat?' he asked, sitting down in the kitchen chair.
She smiled with relief. She had not been aware of it, but her whole body had been tense, waiting for his anger. It would have hurt her more than she could easily accommodate. She poked the stew and took a little broth in her spoon, blowing on it to taste. She usually failed to put in sufficient salt. She wanted this to be especially good.
'Emily,' she replied. 'Why?'
'It looks expensive.'
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'Is that all?' She turned around to look at him, smiling at last.
He met her eyes without a flicker, reading her perfectly.
'And beautiful,' he added, then said beaming, 'Quite beautiful! But it would have suited Emily, too. Why did she give it to you?'
'She saw one she liked better,' she said truthfully. 'Although of course she said it was because she bought it for a funeral and then heard something unpleasant about the deceased.'
'So she gave you the hat?'
'You know Emily.' She sipped the broth and added enough salt to suit Pitt's sharper tongue.' 'When does Eugenie give evidence?'
'When the defense starts. That may not be tomorrow-more probably the next day. You don't need to go.'
'No, I suppose not. But I want to. I don't want just half an opinion.'
'My dear, when did you ever have less than a total opinion? Whatever the issue!'
'Then if I'm going to have an opinion,' she retorted instantly, 'better it be an informed one!'
He had neither energy nor will to argue. If she wanted to go, it was her own decision. In a way there was comfort in sharing the burden of knowing; his aloneness melted away. He could not change anything, but at least he could touch her, and without words, explanations, she would understand exactly what he felt.
The following day, the first witness was Mortimer Swynford. His only purpose was to lay the ground for Titus, by testifying that he had employed Jerome to tutor both his son and his daughter. He had done so very soon after Jerome was engaged by Anstey Way bourne, to whom Swynford was related by marriage; it was Waybourne in fact, who had recommended Jerome to him. No, he had had no idea that Jerome was anything but of the most impeccable moral character. His intellectual record was excellent.
They kept Titus only a matter of minutes. Grave, but more 127
curious than frightened, he stood straight in the stand. Charlotte immediately liked the boy because he gave her the feeling he was saddened by the whole thing, speaking only reluctantly of something he still found distressing and hard to believe.
After the luncheon adjournment, the atmosphere changed entirely. The sympathy, the sober silence, vanished and was replaced with a buzz of whisper, the rustling of clothes in seats as the spectators settled to enjoy a salacious superiority, a little voyeurism without the indignity of crouching at windows or peeping through holes.
Albert Frobisher was called to the stand. He looked small, a strange mixture of the weariness of great age and the vulnerability of a child. He did not surprise Charlotte; her imagination had already built a picture of him that v/as not far from the truth. Yet the reality did somehow shock her. There was something so much sharper about the voice, not just the mind. She sensed a being whose feelings she could not reach, who said things she had not thought of first.
He swore to his name and address.
'What is your occupation, Mr. Frobisher?' Land
