"I wish you'd always take up that attitude," said Meldon. "Your arguments waste a lot of time."
"I'm just going to ask you one question. Supposing Miss King is Mrs. Lorimer--"
"She is. There's no supposition about it."
"And supposing the judge tried her as you say--"
"That's in all the papers. There's no use attempting to deny that, whatever else you deny."
"Callaghan says the cook told him she was," said Meldon, "and it appears that she kissed him when they met, which she'd hardly have done if they weren't relations."
"Then," said the Major triumphantly, "how can you account for his going to stay with her as if she hadn't done anything wrong?"
"Is it likely that, knowing his niece to be a murderess, or at all events believing her to be a murderess, a judge--a judge, mind you, J. J.--would go and stay in the house with her, and kiss her?"
"It was she who kissed him," said Meldon, "but that's a minor point. I see your difficulty now, Major, and I quite admit there's something in it, or appears to be something in it to a man like you who doesn't understand the legal point of view."
"No point of view can alter facts," said the Major, "supposing they are facts, which of course they're not."
"Yes, it can," said Meldon. "To the legal mind a fact ceases to be a fact the moment a properly qualified court has decided the other way. The judge may be, in this particular case he is, as we know, absolutely convinced that his niece is a murderess. But a jury says she isn't, and so from a legal point of view she's a perfectly innocent and upright woman. The judge can't hang her. He can't even warn her not to do it again. He is bound, whatever his private feelings and convictions are, to accept the jury's verdict at its face value, and to treat his niece exactly as he did before all the unpleasantness arose."
"If he's a consistently just man and was on what we may call kissing terms with her before," said Meldon, "he'll of course kiss her again afterwards. He can't do anything else. In the eye of the law--that's what I mean by the legal standpoint--she's an innocent woman. Now the judge's whole position in society and even his income depends on his keeping up the theory that the law is infallible. Whatever you and I as private individuals may do, a judge has only one course open to him. He must take the view that the law takes. That's why I say that it's quite natural for Sir Gilbert to go and stop with his niece and kiss her, though, as I said before, it was really she who kissed him. If he didn't, he'd be admitting publicly that the law was wrong, and he can't do that without giving himself and his whole position away hopelessly."