"Perhaps you had better let me go on. I think she was right to come to me."
"That's of course. What's the good of having spies, if they don't run and tell as soon as they see anything, especially anything—reckless."
"Glencora, you are determined to make me angry. I am angry now,—very angry. I have employed no spies. When rumours have reached me, not from spies, as you choose to call them, but through your dearest friends and mine—"
"What do you mean by rumours from my dearest friends?"
"Never mind. Let me go on."
"No; not when you say my dear friends have spread rumours about me. Tell me who they are. I have no dear friends. Do you mean Alice Vavasor?"
"It does not signify. But when I was warned that you had better not go to any house in which you could meet that man, I would not listen to it. I said that you were my wife, and that as such I could trust you anywhere, everywhere, with any person. Others might distrust you, but I would not do so. When I wished you to go to Monkshade, were there to be any spies there? When I left you last night at Lady Monk's, do you believe in your heart that I trusted to Mrs. Marsham's eyes rather than to your own truth? Do you think that I have lived in fear of Mr. Fitzgerald?"
"No, Plantagenet; I do not think so."
"Do you believe that I have commissioned Mr. Bott to watch your conduct? Answer me, Glencora."
She paused a moment, thinking what actually was her true belief on that subject. "He does watch me, certainly," she said.