The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton 140Part 33 · Chapter 1
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Literature · Romance
The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton 140
Part 33 · Chapter 1
FrankauEnglish
Ronnie, shaking off Spillcroft, spent the luncheon adjournment alone. His bouts with the last witnesses, followed by the shock of Bert Bishop's proof, had rattled him. As he was leaving the court, the doorkeeper handed him another shock--a telegram. Opening it, he read, to his relief: "All love and all success. JULIA." But the growing crowd in the street, the multiplying posters, the comments which reached his ears as he made his hasty way towards Holborn, rattled him still further.
His luck only added to his fears. Had it not been for the two anonymous notes, Maggie Peterson's evidence would have stood unchallenged. Now he could smash that evidence. But even now---even if the jury believed his side of the case sufficiently to discount Brunton's plea of premeditation--even if Bob Fielding and Lucy came well through the ordeal of Brunton's cross-questions--how, how the devil could he hope, unless some miracle gave his halting oratory genius, to secure a complete acquittal?
Lunching alone in the crowded grill-room of the South-Eastern & Chatham Hotel, Ronnie's thoughts went back to other days. He saw himself soldier again, and remembered the particular type of moral courage, of self-control, necessary for the winning of battles. That moral courage, that self-control must be his again if he would win this fight against Brunton. "This is my chance," he thought. "My one chance of downing the brute. I mustn't muff it."
Gradually solitude restored his balance. Gradually, his mind reconcentrated. Weeks of thought crystallized to short sentences. Lucy, Lucy Towers must be saved. Nothing but that mattered. The personal issue dwindled to unimportance.
Walking back to the court, he found that he could think, even of his enemy, logically.
