“I have concealed nothing from you! John, I am sure it is all a mistake.”
“All a mistake?” he angrily repeated. “You concealed nothing from me! When her notoriety was of such common gossip that strangers were familiar with details!”
“If you had not degraded Constance by so meanly believing the palpable artifice of a—a stranger,” quietly and gravely replied Virginia—“if you had but given her an opportunity to defend herself, you would have found no cause for divorce; no cause even to fear the tainted breath of scandal could ever attach to Constance. Oh, John, it is all wrong! Constance is innocent! She has never been untrue to you!”
Excitedly he turned to her, his face ablaze with the fervor of his amazement, as he repeated:
“Innocent—Constance! Constance innocent!”
“Yes,” promptly responded Virginia. “I who know it, swear it is true—swear it is the truth in the sight of that high throne before which we shall all stand in the Judgment Day.
“It was I who originated the dreadful insinuations against Mr. Corway.”
“Yes, yes! That may be true—but—” and Thorpe’s manner again relapsed to a heart-aching resignation, as he sadly added: “He wore my wife’s ring!”
“Yes, that is true, John, but unknown to her and most assuredly without her consent,” eagerly asserted Virginia, and she related the manner Corway obtained the ring, and how she subsequently had indiscreetly informed Beauchamp it was “your gift to Constance.”
Those of poor wayward humanity who, in moments of great passion have done a great wrong, know what torture is silently endured as day and night, in moments awake and in dreams asleep, the crime haunts them, and knocks, knocks, knocks, without ceasing, upon the soul’s door for release of the secret.