"Isn't that a mere quibble?"
"No, it is not. A quibble is a half-truth that obscures a whole one. This is not like that. It is because the whole truth is so difficult to disengage here that it looked like the half-truth. I say nothing of Humphrey; but as regards you it is the whole truth. It is not true—it is a lie—to say that you allowed money to be paid to conceal what you knew. You refused to pay money yourself, because you knew it would have the indirect effect of concealing the truth. It was not in your power to stop the money being paid with an innocent object. And when it is said that you knew of Susan's guilt, if that is in itself a charge of keeping silence, the answer is that you did not keep silence. You told Lord Sedbergh. That you offered him the money afterwards is nothing—would, I mean, be considered nothing against you, as coming afterwards. As it is put in that letter it is as untrue as the rest; for it is intended there to look as if you had offered that money too in order to buy silence."
"My dear," he said, "you have a very clever head. I wonder if you are right. That would exonerate me of everything."
"You are to be exonerated of everything," she said quietly, "except the mistake of thinking it more important that Lord Sedbergh should be told because of the debt that lay heavy on you than because it was right that he should be told in any case. You did tell him, which is all that anyone inclined to criticise you is concerned with, and I know well enough that you would have told him if there were no question of payment. My dear husband, you have been so cast down by the blows you have received that you are inclined to blame yourself, knowing everything, as others are inclined to blame you, knowing nothing."
This was sweet balm to him, and he lay comforting himself with it for some time. But his doubts came back to him.
"Then why did I feel so ashamed before Cheviot?"
She was ready with her answer at once. "For a reason that does you more honour than anything else. You took the sins of others upon you. You took shame before him, not for your own faults, but for theirs. If you could have told him everything, he would have seen what even you couldn't see at the time—that the apparent truth in that letter was not the truth. The only true thing in it was that Susan was guilty."
"And that I knew it."
"There was no shame in that, to you, unless you kept silence, which you did not do."
"I can't see that quite straight yet, Nina, though I should like to. Why are you so sure that I should have told Sedbergh in any case, or insisted upon Humphrey telling him?"