Thus Mr.
Jones raised a real and fairly sufficient obstacle between his lovers,
without rendering his heroine entirely unsympathetic, or presenting her
in the guise of a bewildering moral anomaly. Thirdly, he transferred the
scene of the peripety from a court of justice, with its difficult
adjuncts and tedious procedure, to the private study of a great lawyer.
At the opening of the scene between Mrs. Dane and Sir Daniel Carteret,
she is, no doubt, still anxious and ill-at-ease, but reasonably
confident of having averted all danger of exposure. Sir Daniel, too
(like Sir Charles Russell in the pearl suit), is practically convinced
of her innocence. He merely wants to get the case absolutely clear, for
the final confounding of her accusers. At first, all goes smoothly. Mrs.
Dane's answers to his questions are pat and plausible. Then she makes a
single, almost imperceptible, slip of the tongue: she says, "We had
governesses," instead of "I had governesses." Sir Daniel pricks up his
ears: "We? You say you were an only child.
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