The judge interposed again with the remark, not very severe in tone, that the witness was not in the box to ask questions, but to answer them. At the same time he must remind counsel that the examination must discontinue unless something more relevant immediately appeared in the evidence.
There was silence again for a moment, and even Crozier himself seemed to steel himself for a question he felt was coming.
“Are you married or single?” asked Burlingame, and he did not need to raise his voice to summon the interest of the court.
One person in the audience nearly cried out. It was Kitty Tynan. She had never allowed herself to think of that, but even if she had, what difference could it make whether he was married or single, since he was out of her star?
“You mean you do not know if you have been divorced?”
“What do you mean? That you do not know whether your wife is living or dead?”
“Have you heard from her since you saw her last?”
Kitty Tynan thought of the unopened letter in a woman’s handwriting in the green baize desk in her mother’s house.
“Are we to understand that you do not know whether your wife is living or dead?”
“I have no information that she is dead.”
“I have not said that I left her. Primarily I left Ireland.”
“Assuming that she is alive, your wife will not live with you?”
“Ah, what information have you to that effect?” The judge informed Crozier that he must not ask questions of counsel.
“As you said, I am only picking up a living here, and even the passage by your own second-class steamship line is expensive.”
The judge suppressed a smile. He greatly liked the witness.
“Do you deny that you parted from your wife in anger?”
“When I am asked that question I will try to answer it. Meanwhile, I do not deny what has not been put before me in the usual way.”
Here the judge sternly rebuked the counsel, who ventured upon one last question.
“Has your brother, who inherited, any children?”
“Are you the heir-presumptive to the baronetcy?”
“Call Mrs. Crozier as a witness and see. Meanwhile, I am not upon my trial.”
He turned to the judge, who promptly called upon Burlingame to conclude his examination.
“Why did you change your name when you came here?”
“I put it to you, that what you want is to avoid the outraged law of your own country.”