It was superb. Rathbone himself could not have written anything better.

"Thank you, Sir Herbert. You have explained this tragic situation in a manner I believe we can all understand." He looked at the jury with a rueful gesture. "I myself have experienced embarrassing encounters, and I daresay the gentlemen of the jury may have also. The dreams and priorities in life of young women are at times different from ours, and perhaps we are dangerously, even tragically, insensitive to them." He turned back to the witness stand. "Please remain where you are. I have no doubt my learned friend will have questions to ask you."

He smiled at Lovat-Smith as he walked back to the table and resumed his seat.

Lovat-Smith stood up and straightened his gown before moving across to the center of the floor. He did not look to right or left, but directly up at Sir Herbert.

"In your own words, Sir Herbert, you are not a ladies' man, is that correct?" His voice was courteous, even smooth. There was no hint of panic or defeat in it, just a deference toward a man held in public esteem.

Rathbone knew he was acting. Lovat-Smith was as well aware as he himself how excellent Sir Herbert's testimony had been. All the same his confidence gave Rathbone a twinge of unease.

"No," Sir Herbert said carefully, "I am not."

Rathbone shut his eyes. Please Heaven Sir Herbert would remember his advice now. Say nothing more! Rathbone said over and over to himself. Add nothing. Offer nothing. Don't be led by him. He is your enemy.

"But you must have some considerable familiarity wim the ways of women…" Lovat-Smith said, raising his eyebrows and opening his light blue eyes very wide.

Sir Herbert said nothing.

Rathbone breathed out a sigh of relief.

"You are married, and have been for many years," Lovat-Smith pointed out. "Indeed you have a large family, including three daughters. You do yourself an injustice, sir. I have it on excellent authority that your family life is most contented and well ordered, and you are an excellent husband and father."

"Thank you," Sir Herbert said graciously.

Lovat-Smith's face tightened. There was a faint titter somewhere in the body of the court, instantly suppressed.

"It was not intended as a compliment, sir," Lovat-Smith said sharply. Then he hurried on before there was more laughter. "It was to point out that you are not as unacquainted with the ways of women as you would have us believe. Your relationship with your wife is excellent, you say, and I have no reason to doubt it. At least it is undeniably long and intimate."

Again a titter of amusement came from the crowd, but it was brief and stifled almost immediately. Sympathy was with Sir Herbert; Lovat-Smith realized it and would not make that mistake again.

"Surely you cannot expect me to believe you are an innocent in the nature and affections of women, in the way which they take flattery or attention?'

Now Sir Herbert had no one to guide him as Rathbone had done. He was alone, facing the enemy. Rathbone gritted his teeth.

Sir Herbert remained silent for several minutes.

Hardie looked at him inquiringly.

Lovat-Smith smiled.

"I do not think," Sir Herbert answered at last, lifting his eyes and looking squarely at Lovat-Smith, "that you can reasonably liken my relationship with my wife to that with my nurses, even the very best of them, which undoubtedly Miss Barrymore was. My wife knows me and does not misinterpret what I say. I do not have to be watchful that she has read me aright. And my relationship with my daughters is hardly of the nature we are discussing. It does not enter into it." He stopped abruptly and stared at Lovat-Smith.

Again jurors nodded, understanding plain in their faces.

Lovat-Smith shifted the line of his attack slightly.

"Was Miss Barrymore the only young woman of good birth with whom you have worked, Sir Herbert?"

Sir Herbert smiled. "It is only very recently that such young women have taken an interest in nursing, sir. In fact, it is since Miss Nightingale's work in the Crimea has become so famous that other young women desired to emulate her. And of course there are those who served with her, such as Miss Barrymore, and my present most excellent nurse, Miss Latterly. Previously to that, the only women of gentle birth who had any business in the hospital-one could not call it work in the same sense-were those who served in the Board of Governors, such as Lady Ross Gilbert and Lady Callandra Daviot. And they are not romantically impressionable young ladies."

Rathbone breathed out a sigh of relief. He had negotiated it superbly. He had even avoided saying offensively that Berenice and Callandra were not young.

Lovat-Smith accepted rebuff gracefully and tried again.

"Do I understand correctly, Sir Herbert, that you are very used to admiration?"

Sir Herbert hesitated. "I would prefer to say 'respect,' " he said, deflecting the obvious vanity.

"I daresay." Lovat-Smith smiled at him, showing sharp, even teeth. "But admiration is what I meant. Do not your students admire you intensely?"

"You were better to ask them, sir."

"Oh come now!" Lovat-Smith's smile widened. "No false modesty, please. This is not a withdrawing room where pretty manners are required." His voice hardened suddenly. "You are a man accustomed to inordinate admiration, to people hanging upon your every word. The court will find it difficult to believe you are not well used to telling the difference between overenthusiasm, sycophancy, and an emotional regard which is personal, and therefore uniquely dangerous."

"Student doctors are all young men," Sir Herbert answered with a frown of confusion. "The question of romance does not arise."

Two or three of the jurors smiled.

"And nurses?" Lovat-Smith pursued, eyes wide, voice soft.

"Forgive me for being somewhat blunt," Sir Herbert said patiently. "But I thought we had already covered that. Until very recently they have not been of a social class where a personal relationship could be considered."

Lovat-Smith did not look in the least disconcerted. He smiled very slightly, again showing his teeth. "And your patients, Sir Herbert? Were they also all men, all elderly, or all of a social class too low to be considered?"

A slow flush spread up Sir Herbert's cheeks.

"Of course not," he said very quietly. "But the gratitude and dependence of a patient are quite different. One knows to accept it as related to one's skills, to the patient's natural fear and pain, and not as a personal emotion. Its intensity is transient, even if the gratitude remains. Most men of medicine experience such feelings and know them for what they are. To mistake them for love would be quite foolish."

Fine, Rathbone thought. Now stop, for Heaven's sake! Don't spoil it by going on.

Sir Herbert opened his mouth and then, as if silently hearing Rathbone's thoughts, closed it again.

Lovat-Smith stood in the center of the floor, staring up at the witness box, his head a little to one side. "So in spite of your experience with your wife, your daughters, your grateful and dependent patients, you were still taken totally by surprise when Prudence Barrymore expressed her love and devotion toward you? It must have been an alarming and embarrassing experience for you-a happily married man as you are!"

But Sir Herbert was not so easily tripped.

"She did not express it, sir," he replied levelly. "She never said or did anything which would lead me to suppose her regard for me was more than professional. When her letters were read to me it was the first I knew of it."

"Indeed?" Lovat-Smith said with heavy disbelief, giving a little shake of his head. "Do you seriously expect the jury to believe that?" He indicated them with one hand. "They are all intelligent, experienced men. I think they would find it hard to imagine themselves so… naive." He turned from the witness stand and walked back to his table.