A Pin to see the Peepshow

"More people were arguing now, arguing about the letters, her letters to Leo.  There was her counsel, arguing, as far as she could follow, that the letters were not what he called admissible.
The judge seemed to be arguing that they could prove a conspiracy -- Oh, thought Julia desperately, I've got a good business brain, I know I have.  Why can't I follow this?

But fear had invaded her, invaded all her brain and all her body, and she was almost numbed with it....

The man who was against her, the man who was for the Crown, was arguing about the principals in the second degree, and about something called incitement.  She hardly followed the remarks of the judge, except that he used the word 'admissible' again.  So she supposed that the letters, her precious private letters, that Leo had kept in spite of their agreement, were going to be read in this dreadful place...

How ordinary this man made her life sound, ordinary yet dreadful.  Why, he was even quoting the letter she had written to Leo after they had had tea together -- that time when it had first occurred to her it would be marvellous and splendid to be one of the great lovers of the world...

Letter after letter.   Why, here was that silly chlorodyne letter now, as though chlorodyne would hurt anybody; and all the letters she had written to Leo about their meetings and about when he was coming back.  Why, he was even reading the one about how she had managed to get rid of the baby.

Julia came out of her dream, and leaned forward.  How horrible. He was making it sound as though it referred to getting rid of Herbert.  What was he reading now? -- My heart, I always think of you as my heart.  How horrible to hear that sort of thing  read aloud in that dreadful place....


The next morning, there he was at it again.  All her letters, her precious beautiful letters, building up the future, her future life with Leo -- which she realised now she had always known at the back of her mind would never be an actuality  -- all these precious letters, the spun web of her fancy with which she had tried to enmesh him while he was miles away, continued to be read out in this blind white place."

A Pin to See the Peepshow  F. Tennyson Jesse